Sweden’s Icehotel: the coolest accommodation in the world?

What is it? There aren’t many hotels in the world that need to be rebuilt every year, but Icehotel, in Jukkasjärvi, a remote Swedish village 200km inside the Arctic Circle, is one of them. Made with about 1,000 tonnes of crystal-clear ice harvested from the nearby Torne River, together with 30,000 cubic metres of “snice”, snow mixed with ice, the hotel – or at least part of it – is built by ice sculptors from all over the world each October and melts back into the river each May. The property, which is always rebuilt on the same 5,500 square metres, has a main hall, dozens of ice rooms, an ice bar and an ice church, the designs of which change each year. Last winter’s incarnation – the 26th – featured 50 rooms, including 19 deluxe and art suites with original designs, the temperature within which falls to as low as minus-five degrees Celsius at night. Also on site are wooden huts, which can be rented in the summer. Icehotel 365, a year-round complex chilled in the summer by solar energy and near the original site, is due to open on November 10.