The SnowCastle of Kemi

The Ice and Snow Castle is a large-scale ice and snow art project located in Kemi, Finland. It is also the largest fortress-shaped building in the world made of ice and snow. The Snow Castle was first built in 1996 and immediately attracted 300,000 visitors. Since then, every winter, the city of Kemi will build an ice and snow castle, which has become one of the well-known winter tourist attractions in Finland. The ice and snow castle is set with different themes every year, with a total construction area of 13,000 to 20,000 square meters. The ice castle is made from the frozen sea water in Kemi Bay. The Ice Castle in 2014 was built by Chinese ice sculpture artists. Snow castles and the Samp icebreaker, which is specially designed for tourist cruises, make Kemi an important town for winter tourism in Finland.