neviera (ghiaccera)

A cuneiform tablet from c. 1780 BCE records the construction of an icehouse by Zimri-Lim, the King of Mari, in the northern Mesopotamian town of Terqa, "which never before had any king built." In China, archaeologists have found remains of ice pits from the 7th century BCE, and references suggest that these were in use around 1100 BCE.
Alexander the Great stored snow in pits dug for that purpose around 300 BCE. In Rome, in the 3rd century CE, snow was imported from the mountains, stored in straw-covered pits, and sold from snow shops. The ice that formed in the bottom of the pits sold at a higher price than the snow on top.

Persia

By 400 BCE, Persian engineers were building yakhchāls in the desert. The structure used evaporative cooling, radiative cooling, solar chimney, and diurnal heat reservoir techniques to store ice, food, and sometimes make ice. Water was often channeled from a qanat to a yakhchāl, where it freezes when the conditions were right. The most common structures have a conical shape above ground with a subterranean storage space, shade walls, and ice pool. Many that were built centuries ago remain standing.

United Kingdom
The ice house was introduced to Britain in the 1600s. James I commissioned the first modern ice house in 1619 in Greenwich Park and another in Hampton Court in 1625–6. The Hampton Court Palace ice house (or snow conserve) was a brick-lined well, which was 30 feet (9.1 m) deep and 16 feet (4.9 m) wide. A timber building with a thatched roof covered it. In 1660 Charles II had one built in London's upper St James's Park (now Green Park).

Various types and designs of ice houses exist, but British ice houses were commonly brick-lined, domed structures, with most of their volume underground. Ice houses varied in design by date and…