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The ice palace tends to be a castle-sized and shaped piece of an ice world. It may belong to a larger ice world, or it may be relatively self-contained...
It's a huge, foreboding building that seems as if it was once inhabited by normal people. However, it has now frozen over, and any people who currently live there are definitely not normal.
Expect any videogame boss or Big Bad who lives there to be An Ice Person. Snowlems might also be found living here.
Ice palaces tend to turn up in the mid-to-late story or videogame because of their nature. Also expect icicles, the occasional floor that's too slippery to walk on, and —if it's a videogame — Block Puzzles and various Malevolent Architecture.
A brick-and-mortar dungeon that's entirely underground counts as an Ice Palace if it is otherwise cold enough. But an ice palace has to be more, um, palatial than an icy cave.
May even be ruled by a Winter Royal Lady, or a literal Ice Queen, or Santa Claus.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- In Saint Beast, Zeus turns the palace where the Saint Beasts live into a freezing ice palace and imprisons them there as punishment for their disobedience.
Comic Books
- Superman's Fortress of Solitude is, at least in modern comics, an Ice Palace. This largely comes from the Donner films, however; see the example under Films. It is true that the Fortress was located in the arctic since the Silver Age, but it wasn't depicted as being made from ice until the films.
Film
- The depiction of Superman's Fortress of Solitude as an Ice Palace really comes from the Richard Donner-directed Superman films starring Christopher Reeve. Since then, that idea has migrated into the comics and into certain television portrayals as well.
- In a rare non-fantasy and non-Sci-Fi example, the villain in the James Bond film Die Another Day has an ice palace in the middle of Iceland. Needless to say, Bond soon trashes the place.
Fairy Tales
Game Books
- In the third Lone Wolf game book, The Caverns of Kalte, the ice-fortress of Ikaya is, well, an ice-fortress. The fortress of the Deathlord of Ixia is located in an arctic or subarctic region, but it isn't quite an Ice Palace.
Literature
- In Wintersmith, once the title character has become capable of understanding why it would, it creates an ice palace for it and the Summer Lady to live in.
- The White Witch's palace in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is made out of ice and black magic.
- In the Dragon Lance novel Dragons of the Highlord Skies, and in the corresponding Dungeons & Dragons adventure modules, one group of the Heroes of the Lance must retrieve one of the Dragon Orbs from Icewall Castle.
- The Dresden Files features Arctis Tor, a large ice castle belonging to Mab, the queen of winter. She even has a nice courtyard where she keeps enemies frozen solid.
Newspaper Comics
Music
- The setting of "Crystallize
 ". Lindsey Stirling prances through the (manmade) corridors and in the courtyard, and at night the palace glows.
Video Games
- Ice Palace in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
- The second Ice Land mini-fortress in Super Mario Bros 3
- The Crystal Palace in Paper Mario.
- Joke's End in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga.
- There's a small ice castle within Crystal Caves in Donkey Kong 64.
- Peppermint Palace in Kirby and the Amazing Mirror
- The Frozen Palace from Brave Fencer Musashi.
- The palace from Enchanted Arms where you fight the hot Ice Queen Demonic Golem and yes, that name is pretty much correct.
- Found in the city of Svargrond in Tibia, available for rent as a guild hall.
- Phendrana Drifts in Metroid Prime houses a Chozo chapel.
- In Metroid Prime 3, Bryyo's hidden ice area.
- Kings Quest V features one, where you have to convince the Ice Queen to help you in your quest.
- Permafrost in both EverQuest and Ever Quest 2. Also parts of The Tower of Frozen Shade.
- Half the settings of Battlefield 2142 are located in a Europe that is steadily being overtaken by massive glaciers. The other half are the African settings that all the survivors are trying to occupy.
- In Secret Of Mana, the Ice Palace deep inside the Ice Country, a frozen castle filled with icy monsters. Strangely enough, the Mana Seed of Fire can be found here, after being smuggled into the palace by the Frost Gigas, also known as Santa Claus. Yes, Santa Claus.
- Snowpoint Temple in Pokemon Diamond And Pearl.
- Played straight in one level of Light Crusader — except the boss turns out to be a fire-breathing dragon.
- Glacia in Skies Of Arcadia is an entire city made of ice, found clinging to the underside of a Floating Continent resembling Antarctica and originally founded by the (now-missing) Purple Moon Civilization.
- St. Hermelin High School is transformed into one of these in the Snow Queen Quest of Shin Megami Tensei: Persona.
- Castle Karstaag in The Elder Scrolls III Morrowind expansion Bloodmoon.
- The Winter Palace in the Faerie Lea world in Dragon Quest V. Once the winter curse is broken upon returning, the palace melts and becomes a T'n'T board.
- World of Warcraft has the Icecrown Citadel, shown above. A fortress constructed from metal containing the blood of an Old God, built atop and within a titanic glacier. Not a nice place to visit.
- The fifth boss of Purple resides in such castle.
- Tundaria Tower and the Mars Lighthouse in Golden Sun, the latter being a Fire/Lava based dungeon after you defrost it, technically making it a Hail Fire Peaks level.
- The Wawku shrine in Okami.
- In Baten Kaitos, we have Kaffaljidhma in the land of the witches, Wazn. However, unlike other examples, it holds no evil.
- Icicle Pyramid from Diddy Kong Racing. Not evil, but it is used as a battle arena rather than a racetrack.
Western Animation
Real Life
- There exist hotels and castles/palaces made of ice! Typically inhabited by paid guests, unless an Action Hero happens to be stopping by.
- An episode of Dinner Impossible had Chef Robert cooking for one of these ice hotels, forcing him to do his cooking outside lest the heat from the ovens melt the building.
- Then there's the St. Pete Times Forum, home of the Tampa Bay Lightning, which used to be called the Ice Palace.
- Not a palace, and never actually realized, but there have been plans to build various large and labyrinthine structures, most famously HMS Habakkuk out of a frozen mix of water and wood pulp.
- The Cleveland Harbor West Pierhead Lighthouse looked like one waves of ice water covered it with frost.
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