Category 04 of 04 · Four properties

Ice Hotels

An ice hotel is a building with a deadline. It is cut, carved and assembled in early winter, occupied for a few months, then returned to the water it came from.

The four below differ mainly in how much permanent structure stands beside the cold rooms — which, in practice, is most of what a stay actually feels like.

04.1

Alta, Norway

Rebuilt each January
Carved relief suites
Warm lodge on the estate

Sorrisniva Igloo Hotel

Rebuilt each January beside the Alta River, on the same site since 1999.

Sorrisniva raises a new snow hotel beside the Alta River every winter, carved by a team who begin work as soon as the ice is thick enough and finish shortly after the new year.

Suites are cut in relief each season around a theme that is not repeated, and an ice bar and chapel take up the public end of the building.

A year-round lodge stands on the same estate, so guests can take one cold night and the rest warm — which is how most of them use it.

04.2

Ylläs, Finland

Village layout
New theme each winter
Warm cabins alongside

Lainio Snow Village

A whole village of snow, redesigned around a new theme every winter.

Snow Village is less a hotel than a small settlement: corridors, a restaurant, a bar and a chapel cut from snow and ice in the fells of Lapland, with sleeping rooms opening off the main routes.

The whole design changes each winter, and the site has been built for film and television often enough that the sculpting is more elaborate than the format usually allows.

Warm cabins and glass-roofed rooms sit alongside it, which is what makes a stay here practical for more than one night.

04.3

Rovaniemi, Finland

Inside a winter park
Ice bar and restaurant
Arctic Circle site

Snowman World Igloo Hotel

An ice hotel inside a winter park on the Arctic Circle.

Snowman World sits within a winter park on the Arctic Circle outside Rovaniemi, and the igloo hotel is one part of a site that also holds an ice bar, an ice restaurant and a set of toboggan runs.

Rooms are built from snow blocks with a bed on an ice base, a reindeer hide and a heavy sleeping bag, and warm facilities are a short walk across the park.

Because the park is busy in the daytime and empties in the evening, the building feels like two different places either side of dinner.

04.4

Făgăraș Mountains, Romania

On a frozen lake
Reached by cable car
Ice church on site

Hotel of Ice, Bâlea Lac

Built each winter on a frozen glacial lake, reached by cable car.

Romania's ice hotel is assembled every winter on the frozen surface of Bâlea Lake, high in the Făgăraș Mountains, from blocks cut out of the lake itself.

There is no road up in winter: the site is reached by cable car, and everything in the building arrived the same way. A small ice church and a bar sit beside the rooms.

The hotel melts into the lake in spring, and the same water is cut again the following December.