Ice Hotels

Seasonal hotels rebuilt each winter from snow and ice, with warm accommodation alongside.

What we cover here

Ice hotels are rebuilt from scratch every winter and gone by spring, which makes them closer to seasonal architecture than to hotels in the ordinary sense. All four below pair carved cold rooms with warm accommodation nearby, because that is how these stays actually work in practice.

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Icehotel

Jukkasjärvi, Sweden

Rebuilt each winter since 1989Art Suites carved by invited artistsYear-round Icehotel 365 section

The original, and still the reference point for everything that followed. Icehotel at Jukkasjärvi has been rebuilt from Torne River ice every winter since 1989, with a rotating cast of invited artists carving the Art Suites so that no two seasons repeat.

A permanent, solar-cooled section known as Icehotel 365 now keeps part of the experience available outside the winter months. Warm accommodation, saunas and a restaurant sit alongside the cold rooms, because almost nobody spends a whole trip below freezing and the hotel has never pretended otherwise.

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Hôtel de Glace

Saint-Gabriel-de-Valcartier, Quebec, Canada

Rebuilt annually since 2001Themed ice suites with fireplacesAdjacent year-round resort

North America's ice hotel is raised each winter in the Valcartier valley outside Quebec City and melts away in spring, a cycle it has repeated since 2001.

Suites are carved and themed anew each season, some with fireplaces set into ice walls, and guests sleep in insulated sleeping bags on ice beds topped with hides. Because the hotel shares a site with a year-round resort, the practical business of showers, warm rooms and meals is handled next door, which makes a one-night stay considerably easier to plan.

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Kirkenes Snowhotel

Kirkenes, Norway

Rebuilt each DecemberHusky kennels on siteGamme cabins for warm nights

Kirkenes Snowhotel sits in Norway's far northeast, close enough to the Russian border that the landscape feels genuinely remote.

The snow hotel is rebuilt each December with carved rooms and an ice bar, while a cluster of timber gamme cabins along the fjord provides warm accommodation for the nights guests would rather not spend at minus five. The property keeps its own husky kennels, and much of what happens here — sledding, king crab fishing, aurora watching in the long dark — is arranged from the door rather than driven to.

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SnowHotel Kemi

Kemi, Finland

Part of the SnowCastle complexIce restaurant and chapelOn the Gulf of Bothnia

Kemi's SnowHotel forms one part of the larger SnowCastle built each winter on the shore of the Gulf of Bothnia, a structure that also contains an ice restaurant and a chapel used for winter weddings.