2016 IceHotel in Swedish Lapland opens themed around animals and films

The 26th IceHotel in Swedish Lapland is now open. This year, 19 individually designed art suites form part of the hotel complex, which includes 55 rooms, a church and a bar.
The custom suites include a life-sized ice elephant, a peacock, a room full of flying sheep and a 1970s love capsule – while the Cesare's Wake suite, designed by by Petros Dermatas and Ellie Souti, references 1920s cult horror film The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. The suites have all been hand-crafted by different artists, such as the three-metre-tall African elephant which towers over an ice-framed bed in a suite by Swedish sculptor Anna Sofia Maag.

It took 48,000 hours of labour to complete the IceHotel, and enough material to make 700 million snowballs. Impressively the frozen chandeliers are each made from 1000 hand-cut ice crystals. Yet all of this will completely melt away over spring.