When enthusiastic Sapporo high school students built six snow statues in Odori Park in 1950, nobody dreamed 65 years later it would be the world-class Sapporo Snow Festival, drawing 2.4 million visitors to Hokkaido’s capital.

By the time Sapporo hosted the Winter Olympic Games in 1972, the Snow Festival was already an international event, and two years later it became a venue for the International Snow Sculpture Contest. The 2016 festival, held Feb. 5–11, will feature more than 400 snow and ice sculptures, several of them life-sized replicas of iconic buildings.

The main site is still Sapporo’s mile-long Odori Park in the city center. That’s where you’ll find the festival’s signature snow sculptures, some of them 75 feet wide and rising 50 feet above the snow-covered streets. About a dozen of these mammoth snow buildings command attention, but more than 100 smaller works transform Odori Park into an ephemeral outdoor sculpture gallery. Some of the larger sculptures form stages for concerts and performances that keep the scene lively.

Snow sculpture at the Sapporo Snow Festival © Seiksoon | Dreamstime.com

The statues are lit from sunset until 10 p.m. each night, and the trees overhead sparkle with thousands of tiny lights. The Sapporo TV Tower, also lighted, rises like a giant exclamation point at the eastern end of Odori Park. Although nothing beats looking up at the sculptures from below, the tower provides the place for an overview. See them from the tower by day, then again at night for an entirely different effect.

For weeks before the festival, the equivalent of 6,500 five-ton truckloads of snow are hauled to the site and poured into gigantic wooden frames. When the snow is packed and solid, the frames are removed and carving begins. The largest sculpture of last year’s festival was of the Kasuga Taisha Shrine in Nara, which took 3,500 members of the Japanese military nearly a month to finish, with each of its 1,540 separate decorative elements sculpted in intricate detail. During the festival, you can watch teams carving their entries for the International Snow Sculpture Contest.

In addition to Odori Park, two other areas of Sapporo host festival events, activities and sculptures. The wide main boulevard of the Susukino entertainment district is lined with more than 60 ice sculptures and an ice bar that serves hot drinks. The sculptures at Susukino are bathed in colored lights throughout the day and until 11 p.m.

The family-oriented Tsudome site features giant snow slides, snow rafting, more snow sculptures, food vendors and an ice-skating rink. At another rink in Odori Park you can rent skates. New this year will be “bushwalking on skis” (Nordic skiing) with free equipment rentals.