The Silver Age Fortress of Solitude, from Superman #187 ( June 1966). Art by Curt Swan and George Klein. The Fortress of Solitude is the occasional headquarters of Superman in DC Comics. Its predecessor, Superman's "Secret Citadel", first appeared in Superman #17, where it was said to be built into a mountain on the outskirts of Metropolis.
The "classic" Silver Age Fortress first appeared in Action Comics #241 (1958). It is located in the Arctic and is accessible through a large gold door. The arrow-shaped key is so large that only Superman (or another Kryptonian or Daxamite) can lift it; it also serves as an aircraft marker.
(The name and location of the Fortress were most likely inspired by Doc Savage's Fortress of Solitude.)
The Fortress contained an alien zoo, a giant steel diary (which Superman wrote in using heat vision), a chess-playing robot, and rooms dedicated to all of his friends. As the stories continued, it was revealed that the Fortress was where Superman's robot duplicates were stored, and featured statues of Jor-El and Lara holding a globe of Krypton. It also contained the Phantom Zone Projector, various pieces of alien technology he had acquired on visits to other worlds, and, much like the Batcave, trophies of his past adventures.
The Fortress also became the home of the Bottle City of Kandor (until it was enlarged), and an apartment in the Fortress was set aside for Supergirl.
The pre-Crisis Fortress made its last appearance in Superman Annual #11, in which it served as a battleground for a battle between Superman and the supervillain Mongul.
Post-Crisis
In John Byrne's Man Of Steel mini-series, which introduced the post-Crisis Superman, the Clark Kent persona was described as a "Fortress of Solitude", in that it allowed him to live as the ordinary person he saw himself as, and leave the world-famous superhero behind. This concept was often invoked in later stories, with one story even featuring Superman hiding his secret identity from a telepath behind a door identical to that of the pre-Crisis Fortress. By that time, however, a more physical Fortress had been introduced.
In Action Comics Annual #2 (1989), Superman, on a self-imposed exile to space, was entrusted with a Kryptonian artifact called the Eradicator, created by his ancestor Kem-L. Dedicated to preserving Krypton, this device built a new Fortress in the Antarctic as a precursor to recreating Krypton on Earth. Superman broke the Eradicator's control, but maintained the Fortress as a useful location for emergencies. It contained many artifacts from post-Crisis Krypton, most notably a number of robot servitors (one of whom, Kelex, became a trusted confidant) and a battlesuit from the Third Age of Krypton.
This Fortress was cast into the Phantom Zone as a result of a battle between Superman, Lex Luthor and Dominus, a villain who played with Superman's mind and who was also trapped in the Zone. It did, however, serve as the template for the current Fortress, built into an extradimensional space accessed through a vast puzzle-globe somewhere in the Andes.
The current Fortress is home to Krypto and his dog-sitter "Ned" (the last Superman duplicate robot), and contains the current version of Kandor, a portal to the Phantom Zone, Kryptonian and alien artifacts, and holographic images of Jor-El and Lara.
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