A snice Swedish hotel

Imagine a hotel with a new design every year. New suites, a brand new reception, a new bar, even a chapel. 

  • New suites, a brand new reception, a new bar every year! Icebar picture by Peter Kindersley/Courtesy of Ice Hotel
  • Imagine a hotel with a new design every year. New suites, a brand new reception, a new bar, even a chapel. Well, there is such a hotel: the Ice Hotel of Jukkasjärvi, in Swedish Lapland. A new version appears – and disappears – every year.
    The more than 65 rooms of the 2016 Ice Hotel have literally been carved over the last 5-6 weeks, anticipating the season’s grand opening date on December 11, 2015.

  • Among the deluxe suites, ice and snow rooms, there are also 19 hand crafted art suites this year, whose artists and themes were chosen from some 130 submission ideas. Photo Courtesy of Ice Hotel
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    Among the deluxe suites, ice and snow rooms, there are also 19 hand crafted art suites this year, whose artists and themes were chosen from some 130 submission ideas like “the elephant in the room,” “hibernation,” “counting sheep,” “the great escape” and more. Yes, the suites are cold — they are carved of natural ice and snow (known as snice), after all — but there are warm room options, too.

  • The framework molds used for building the Ice Hotel each year. Photo Twitter
  • It takes 10,000 tons of crystal clear ice and 30,000 tons of snow to build the Ice Hotel. When the weather gets cold, the snow cannons get going. Snow is sprayed onto specially constructed metal molds. Once the snow has hardened, the molds are removed and used again to produce further snow sections. The temperature in the Ice Hotel ranges from 25˚F to 16˚F, depending on the outside temperature and the number of overnight visitors.

  • Mandatory reading before you go: 10 Tips for sleeping on a bed of ice

  • Winter adventures await — both outdoors and indoors: www.icehotel.com