Ice Hotels

The original, rebuilt every December from ice harvested out of the Torne River and released back into it each spring. Artists apply from around the world to carve the art suites, so no two winters produce the same interior; the corridors shift, the chapel moves, the bar is recut. Sleeping is on ice beds laid with reindeer hides inside thermal sleeping bags at around minus five degrees, while heated cabins and a permanent year-round ice section stand alongside for guests who want both experiences.

North America's ice hotel is raised each January in the Valcartier valley outside Quebec City and stands until late March. Around forty rooms and themed suites are carved under vaulted snow arches, several with their own ice fireplaces and slides connecting to the corridor. The chapel is booked for weddings through the short season. Guests are briefed on how to sleep warm before check-in, and the adjoining Village Vacances complex provides heated pavilions, spa facilities and somewhere to thaw out.

Far north of the Arctic Circle near the Russian border, Kirkenes Snowhotel is rebuilt every winter with carved rooms kept at a steady four below zero. What distinguishes it is everything around the ice: a working husky kennel with several hundred dogs, reindeer kept on site, king crab safaris out onto the frozen fjord and glass-roofed Gamme cabins for guests who would rather watch the aurora from a warm bed. The restaurant leans hard on Barents Sea catch.

Built each winter at Lehtojärvi outside Rovaniemi, the Arctic SnowHotel pairs carved snow rooms with a row of heated glass igloos set apart from the main structure for aurora watching. There is a snow sauna — genuinely unusual, a sauna cut into snow — along with ice bar, ice restaurant and an outdoor hot tub. The surrounding forest is used for snowshoe and snowmobile routes, and the site closes and melts back into the lakeshore each spring like the rest of them.