On the edge of the world’s largest salt flat, in southwestern Bolivia, sits a hotel where the walls, floors, ceilings, beds, tables, chairs, and several sculptures are made of salt. Not coated in salt. Made entirely of compressed salt blocks, quarried from the Salar de Uyuni roughly four kilometers away. The hotel posts a written notice asking guests not to lick the walls. The warning is in earnest. Guests do try.
The Palacio de Sal (Salt Palace) sits on the eastern edge of the Salar de Uyuni, a 10,582-square-kilometer salt flat at 3,656 meters elevation in Bolivia’s Potosí Department. The Salar is the largest salt flat on Earth — substantially larger than Connecticut — and contains an estimated 10 billion tons of salt.
The hotel opened in its current form in 2007, after the original structure (built directly on the Salar in 1998) had to be demolished due to environmental contamination concerns. This version is built off the Salar itself, on a small piece of solid ground, with proper sanitation infrastructure. About 30 guest rooms are arranged around a central lounge and dining area, with all interior surfaces and most furniture constructed from salt blocks cut from the Salar.
The Salt Blocks and Construction
The salt blocks used in construction are cut directly from the Salar’s hardened upper crust, then dried and compressed. Each block weighs approximately 30-33 pounds and is dimensioned similarly to a cinder block — though substantially heavier per volume due to salt density. The blocks are bonded together with a slurry of wet salt that hardens as it dries and effectively fuses adjacent blocks. The walls have no internal steel reinforcement — steel and salt are mutually destructive — so the building’s structural design relies entirely on mass and the compressive strength of salt itself.
Salt has reasonable compressive strength but very poor tensile strength. This means salt buildings can be built tall and supported but cannot have long unsupported spans. The Palacio’s interior is consequently divided into many small spaces with frequent supporting walls — a constraint that the architecture turns into a feature, giving the hotel a maze-like character that guests routinely cite as part of its appeal.
Why the “Do Not Lick” Sign Exists
Guests do, in fact, lick the walls. There’s something about being in a building made of salt that creates an irresistible urge to confirm what you’re seeing. The hotel staff have observed enough of this behavior over the years to post a formal notice asking guests not to do it. The reasons for the notice are practical rather than punitive.
First, repeated tongue contact erodes the salt blocks measurably over time — a single lick is insignificant, but the cumulative effect across 30 guest rooms and several thousand visitors per year adds up. Second, there are hygienic concerns: shared salt surfaces touched by many guests are not a healthy thing to put your tongue on, regardless of the underlying material.
The salt is food-grade or near-food-grade, but it’s been sitting in a hotel for years and touched by many hands. The notice is essentially a polite request that guests consider both the building’s structural integrity and their own digestive system.
What a Night Actually Involves
Rooms at the Palacio de Sal include traditional amenities — beds with conventional mattresses placed on salt-block bedframes, bathrooms with conventional plumbing (not salt fixtures), heating systems (necessary at 3,656 meters elevation), and electricity. The salt is everywhere but doesn’t get in the way. Floors are salt with grit-like texture. Walls are salt with rough crystalline texture. The bed frame is salt sculpted into a frame shape. The small writing desk is salt. Bathroom walls and floors are conventional tile — the designers determined that salt and water in repeated exposure wouldn’t survive long-term.
Rooms run approximately 250-500 USD per night during peak season, with lower rates in shoulder seasons, positioning the hotel as mid-to-upper-range by Bolivian standards but significantly less expensive than equivalent-novelty hotels in Europe or North America.
The Wider Uyuni Circuit
Most travelers don’t visit just the Palacio. The Salar de Uyuni and surrounding lagoons typically anchor a 3-day, 4-day, or longer overland tour through southwestern Bolivia’s altiplano. The standard circuit includes the Salar itself, the colored lagoons of the Reserva Eduardo Avaroa, geysers at Sol de Mañana, hot springs at Termas de Polques, and the surreal landscape of the Salvador Dalí desert.
The Palacio works as one piece of this circuit — most often as the first or last night’s accommodation, given its proximity to Uyuni town and the airport. Other accommodations along the circuit are simpler: basic lodges with limited heating and running water. The contrast between the Palacio and the refugios is one of the consistent observations in trip reports from this region.
Practical Considerations
The Palacio de Sal sits at 3,656 meters (12,000 feet) above sea level. Altitude sickness affects a meaningful percentage of visitors, particularly those arriving directly from sea level. Most experienced operators recommend spending at least one night in La Paz or Sucre before continuing to Uyuni. Pharmacological options including acetazolamide (Diamox) are widely used. Hydration, slow movement during the first 24 hours, and avoiding alcohol help. The Palacio itself doesn’t provide supplemental oxygen as standard, though some higher-end hotels in the region do.
