The world has no shortage of "unique" hotels β boutique properties with quirky dΓ©cor, "unusual" breakfast menus, that kind of thing. This list is not about those. This list is about hotels that are genuinely, fundamentally, architecturally bizarre. Places where the concept of what a hotel even is has been completely rethought. Here are ten of them.
ICEHOTEL β JukkasjΓ€rvi, Sweden
Why it's weird: Every single room is carved from scratch out of 30,000 tonnes of river ice, melts completely every spring, and is rebuilt from zero the following winter. No two rooms are ever the same. The bed is ice. The bar glasses are ice. The chandeliers are ice. You sleep in a sleeping bag at -5Β°C and it is genuinely one of the best nights of sleep you will ever have.
The detail that makes it: The ICEHOTEL 365 section is kept frozen year-round using 100% renewable solar energy β so even in August, you can sleep inside a frozen hotel 200km above the Arctic Circle while the midnight sun shines outside.
The Mirrorcube β Treehotel, Harads, Sweden
Why it's weird: A box covered entirely in reflective aluminium mirrors that perfectly reflects the surrounding forest β making it effectively invisible. From 50 metres away, you cannot see the room at all. Birds were flying into it, so they had to add infrared film. It is a floating, forest-camouflaged box hovering in a pine tree and it contains a perfectly normal, quite nice hotel room.
The detail that makes it: The same designers also made a UFO and a giant bird's nest at the same site. Sweden apparently has a high tolerance for architectural insanity in forests.
Skylodge β Sacred Valley, Peru
Why it's weird: A transparent polycarbonate pod bolted to the face of a granite cliff, 400 metres above the Urubamba River. To check in, you either climb a 400-metre via ferrata up the cliff face, or take a zipline. The floor is transparent. The walls are transparent. There is nothing between you and the valley floor 400 metres below except a curved piece of plastic and some bolts.
The detail that makes it: Dinner is brought to you on the cliff face by a waiter who has also climbed the via ferrata, carrying a tray. This is genuinely the most committed room service in hospitality.
Jules' Undersea Lodge β Key Largo, Florida
Why it's weird: The only hotel on Earth where you must scuba dive to reach your room. The entrance is through a hatch in the floor of a pressurised habitat, 6 metres underwater. Once inside, it is like a very small, adequately-appointed submarine that cannot move. Originally built as an ocean research station used by Jacques Cousteau's team. Now delivers pizza via wetsuit-wearing staff.
The detail that makes it: You are technically breathing pressurised air the entire time you sleep, like a continuous gentle decompression. Some guests report unusually vivid dreams.
HΓ΄tel Sidi Driss β Matmata, Tunisia
Why it's weird: An underground hotel in a Berber troglodyte pit in the Tunisian desert, where the rooms are carved into the earth around an open courtyard that was used as the interior of Luke Skywalker's childhood home in the original Star Wars (1977). The hotel is still operating. The Star Wars murals are still on the walls. You can eat breakfast in the exact spot where Owen Lars told Luke he couldn't go to the Academy.
The detail that makes it: Rooms from Β£25 a night. The most affordable "be inside a film set" experience in the world, by a significant margin.
The Desert Cave Hotel β Coober Pedy, Australia
Why it's weird: A full hotel carved underground into an opal-bearing sandstone hill in the South Australian desert, because the surface temperature in summer is 50Β°C and humans have simply decided to live underground instead of deal with it. The whole town is underground. There are underground churches, underground shops, underground bars, and underground houses where people have lived their entire lives. This is Mad Max's filming location and it looks exactly how that sounds.
The detail that makes it: You can buy an opal-mining claim for $30, dig a hole, and legally keep anything you find. Several people have discovered million-dollar opals while digging their holiday homes.
The Stanley Hotel β Estes Park, Colorado
Why it's weird: Stephen King stayed in Room 217, had a nightmare about his son being chased through the corridors, woke up, and wrote The Shining. The Stanley is the Overlook Hotel. The ballroom is the Gold Room. Kubrick used Timberline Lodge for the exterior, but King β who hated Kubrick's film β made his own TV miniseries in 1997 and filmed it here, at the real hotel. The property runs ghost tours through corridors that have been photographed with unexplained apparitions for decades.
The detail that makes it: Room 217 is fully bookable. It is consistently the hotel's most-requested room. The waitlist is months long.
Shire's Rest at Hobbiton β Matamata, New Zealand
Why it's weird: Peter Jackson spotted this farm from a helicopter in 1998 and decided it looked exactly like The Shire. He was right. The Alexander family's farm in Waikato became Hobbiton β the permanent set for all six films β and Shire's Rest is the official accommodation on the same working farm. You wake up before the tourist coaches arrive and walk to Bag End in morning mist. The Green Dragon Inn serves genuine beer. You are 100% inside The Shire.
The detail that makes it: The entire set is permanent β it was rebuilt in steel and concrete after the original plywood version was demolished after Fellowship. Jackson regretted demolishing the original and rebuilt it to last forever.
The Muraka β Conrad Maldives
Why it's weird: A two-level villa where the lower level β containing the master bedroom and bathroom β sits 5 metres beneath the Indian Ocean surface, surrounded by a 180-degree curved acrylic wall providing an uninterrupted view of the coral reef, nurse sharks and manta rays. The bedroom wall is the ocean floor. You wake up and the first thing you see is a school of tropical fish at face height. It costs $50,000 a night.
The detail that makes it: The villa is positioned in a marine protected area where over 1,000 species of fish have been recorded. On bioluminescent plankton nights, the ocean floor glows blue.
BΓ’lea Lake Ice Hotel β Transylvanian Alps, Romania
Why it's weird: An ice hotel built directly on the surface of a frozen mountain lake at 2,034 metres altitude in the Transylvanian Alps, accessible only by cable car once the road closes for winter. You are completely cut off from the rest of the world by mountains and snow. Wolves and bears inhabit the forests below. The nearest town is hours away and unreachable without the cable car. This is, genuinely, what it looks like in Dracula's homeland in winter.
The detail that makes it: At under Β£100/night, it is the most affordable ice hotel in Europe. The cost is low because it does not come with many things that expensive ice hotels offer β like certainty that the cable car will be running tomorrow.
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