No. 1
Lapland Hotels SnowVillage
Kittilä, Finland
SnowVillage is rebuilt from scratch every winter on a site near Kittilä in Finnish Lapland, above the Arctic Circle. Snow and ice are packed and carved into a new plan each season, usually around a chosen theme, so the corridors, the chapel, the bar and the sculpted rooms a guest walks through in one January have no exact counterpart in the next. By spring the whole structure has melted back into the ground it stood on.
Sleeping here is a specific experience rather than a comfortable one in the ordinary sense. Interior temperatures hold a few degrees below freezing regardless of the weather outside; guests are given insulated sleeping bags and briefed on how to use them, and warm facilities — showers, changing rooms, a sauna — sit in heated buildings alongside. Most people book a single night in the snow and spend the rest of their stay in the conventional rooms on site.
Around it is the reason many travellers come north at all: dark skies with a real chance of aurora, snowshoe and husky country, and the long blue light of an Arctic midwinter afternoon. Warm layers, boots and gloves are not optional.