The Ice Hotel at Jukkasjarvi, Swedish Lapland, offers the ultimate in cold comfort - a building constructed out of ice where the average room temperature is minus four degrees centigrade. The beds are made from packed snow topped with spruce boughs and reindeer skins. The hotel melts every April and has to be rebuilt the following winter.
The six-story Elephant Hotel at Margate, New Jersey, is in the shape of a huge elephant, complete with trunk and tusks.
It was built in 1881 by James V. Lafferty as a real-estate promotion. The 65ft-high concrete elephant, named Lucy, was used as a tavern before being converted into a hotel. The reception area is in her hind legs and a staircase in each leg leads up to the main rooms.
The Pineapple Lodge stands in Dunmore Park, Central Scotland.
The lower part of the building is an ordinary octagonal tower but from the tops of the columns sprout stone, spiky leaves, transforming it into a 53ft-high pineapple. It was built in 1761 at the request of the Fourth Earl of Dunmore for reasons known only to himself.
Sir Thomas Tresham was obsessed with the power of numbers and in 1597 ordered the building of a triangular lodge at Rushton, Northamptonshire, in which everything relates to the number three - a homage to the Trinity. It has three sides, each of which measures 33ft, three gables on each side, three stories and triangular or hexagonal rooms decorated with trefoils or triangles in groups of three. All of the Latin inscriptions have 33 letters.
The Crocodile Hotel near Ayers Rock in the heart of the Australian outback is a building complex in the shape of a crocodile. The 'eyes' protrude from the reception area, the rooms run along the 'body' to the 'tail' and the hotel swimming pool is located in the creature's 'alimentary canal.'
The six-story Elephant Hotel at Margate, New Jersey, is in the shape of a huge elephant, complete with trunk and tusks.
It was built in 1881 by James V. Lafferty as a real-estate promotion. The 65ft-high concrete elephant, named Lucy, was used as a tavern before being converted into a hotel. The reception area is in her hind legs and a staircase in each leg leads up to the main rooms.
The Pineapple Lodge stands in Dunmore Park, Central Scotland.
The lower part of the building is an ordinary octagonal tower but from the tops of the columns sprout stone, spiky leaves, transforming it into a 53ft-high pineapple. It was built in 1761 at the request of the Fourth Earl of Dunmore for reasons known only to himself.
Sir Thomas Tresham was obsessed with the power of numbers and in 1597 ordered the building of a triangular lodge at Rushton, Northamptonshire, in which everything relates to the number three - a homage to the Trinity. It has three sides, each of which measures 33ft, three gables on each side, three stories and triangular or hexagonal rooms decorated with trefoils or triangles in groups of three. All of the Latin inscriptions have 33 letters.
The Crocodile Hotel near Ayers Rock in the heart of the Australian outback is a building complex in the shape of a crocodile. The 'eyes' protrude from the reception area, the rooms run along the 'body' to the 'tail' and the hotel swimming pool is located in the creature's 'alimentary canal.'