A prison is, surely, the great antithesis of a trip —especially after several months of confinement—, of that feeling of freedom provided by going out and exploring the world. So, why does so-called prison tourism arouse so much curiosity and so much interest? Why do travelers visit them? Probably because within some of them important episodes of human history took place, and also transport us to other times in an almost violent way. If you travel to learn, within these walls you can understand many aspects of the human being.
The old jails around the world have three possibilities when they are closed: to be demolished —as happened with the Madrid prison of Carabanchel—, to be abandoned and to become ghost buildings or to be converted into museums, cultural spaces or even hotels. And it is that sleeping in a cell can provide a different experience - like the feeling of true confinement, without comforts. We enter some of the most famous prisons in the world.
Mandela's cell
Robben Island (Cape Town, South Africa)
Nelson Mandela was one of the most famous prisoners of the end of the 20th century: in total he spent 27 years of his life in prison. When the entire world sang Free Nelson Mandela in 1984 , the leader of the African National Congress (ANC) had already been behind bars for 18 years; specifically, in cell number 5 - just 2 by 2.30 meters - on South African Robben Island.
This bare piece of Table Bay land, off Cape Town, was the prison of the Dutch colonizers since 1650. Mandela, as a low-level inmate, had few privileges and a hard life, but kept his will unshakable.
The prison is now a world heritage site and the guided tours of it - from Madiba's cell, nickname for the great anti- apartheid activist , to the quarry where he did forced labor - convey the hardships suffered there, as a former prisoner recounts his heartbreaking experience first hand. Ferries to Robben Island depart - weather permitting - from the V&A docks in Cape Town.
The impossible escape
Alcatraz (San Francisco, United States)
Natural island of the San Francisco Bay is probably the most famous prison in the world, although it only operated as such for 29 years (from 1934 to 1963). Alcatraz was a super prison, a penitentiary experiment in the face of the increase in crimes in the United States after the Great Depression of the 1930s. Some of the best-known gangsters of the time, like Al Capone or Robert Birdman Stroud, were locked up here . But the great myth of the Alcatraz prison is that nobody managed to escape it: the 36 prisoners who tried it were captured, shot dead or drowned in the waters of the bay.
But this isolated rock - this was its nickname - is much more: today audio guides emphasize cells, but also bird colonies and memories of their occupation by Native Americans between 1969 and 1971. It has also been the scene of more than a few movies set in prison, the most famous among them Escape from Alcatraz , with Clint Eastwood as the protagonist.
Ferries depart from San Francisco Pier 33 every 30 minutes to Alcatraz Island, integrated within the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
Life imprisonment doing tourism
Ohio State Reformatory (Mansfield, United States)
Another movie jail can be found in Mansfield, Ohio. Who does not remember Life imprisonment , with Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins? It was shot in a real prison, a place that today has become a tourist pilgrimage enclave. People roam the interior rooms, the courtyards where prisoners talked, organized their escapes ... But the Ohio State Reformatory is also a place with esoteric connotations that attracts many seekers of life in the afterlife.
Abandoned in 1990, the facilities have been renovated, yes, some of the most significant areas are preserved as they were. Today you can even hold an event in its old dining and recreation rooms for prisoners. There are those who even get married here, decorating their facilities a bit. But if we do not aspire to that much, we can always limit ourselves to the tourist tour , with or without a guide.
Escape with Papillon
Devil's Island (French Guiana)
Henry Charrière, the famous Papillon , was a French citizen accused of a crime he did not commit and sentenced to life in prison and forced labor in a prison in the French colonies. It could have been a tropical paradise, but the Île du Diable (Devil's Island) to which he was transferred was, in reality, a living hell, a prison for 80,000 French criminals between 1852 and 1946, from which few escaped. It is the smallest of the three Salvation Islands, off the coast of French Guiana. Conditions were miserable, with unbearable heat and voracious malaria-transmitting mosquitoes. Even when the inmates found an exit through the jungle or the rough seas, crocodiles and other dangers lurked.
Charrière escaped, although some doubt it; Papillon , the book that tells his story, was adapted into film in 1973 with Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman leading the cast. But he was not the only famous prisoner. Alfred Dreyfus, the protagonist of the Dreyfus case in the late 19th century, or the French anarchist Clément Duval were also here. There are ferries and catamarans (more comfortable) that arrive to the island from Kourou in an hour and a half journey, approximately.
A bloody past
Tower of London (UK)
Built for centuries as the bulwark of William the Conqueror in 1070, the Tower of London has protected kings, safeguarded the jewels of the British Crown, and hosted some of Britain's most popular prisoners: Guy Gunpowder Plot Fawkes, the Little Princess (alleged illegitimate children of Edward IV) and Sir Walter Raleigh passed through this fort alongside the Thames. Many other of his inmates were executed. Henry VIII used his slicing board here to dispatch two of his wives. The tower is now more refined (ghost stories aside), and the circuits commented by the beefeaters (guardians of the tower) are most gruesome.
Its past of terrible murders has made this building one of the British capital's biggest tourist attractions, and even its crows are famous: it is said that if they ever disappear, both the building and the British crown would fall. And continuing with its legend, it is said that the only space in the complex where there are no ghosts is the White Tower, since during its construction an animal (a cat) was sacrificed and buried within its walls for its protection.
Prisons that sold slaves
Cape Coast (Ghana) and the island of Goreé (Senegal)
There are enclaves on the West African coast that still remember one of the most terrible chapters in the history of Humanity: the slave trade. One of them is the Cape Coast Castle, three hours from Accra, the capital of Ghana. Although somewhat left behind, the walls - white and tall - and the terraces of this fortress declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco are still impressive, as when they were built in the 17th century. It looks like one more villa on the Atlantic, but inside it hides dungeons through which more than a thousand souls passed during the height of the slave trade, and in which they remained months before being sent, crowded in ships, to the New World. It is not difficult to imagine how hellish that wait must have been, with the sea breeze slipping through the bars as the only contact with the world.
Most famous is the penitentiary on the island of Goreé, opposite Dakar (Senegal). It is estimated that at least 20 million people (men, women and children) were captured in the villages of the Senegalese capital to be sold by the slave traders established on this island. The interior of this house of slaves was conceived for the trade of human beings, who remained in their dungeons until they were embarked by a corridor known as "the place from which one does not return", and that was the only place where families They could see each other for the last time before starting the trip to America, from where they would never return. In 1848 France abolished slavery and this prison, which had been the most active place in this trade, was closed. Since 1978 it has been a world heritage site and an essential visit for everyone who travels to Senegal.
The views of the Count of Montecristo
If Castle (Marseille, France)
The If castle is also historical, and above all romantic, seen from the coast in the bay of Marseille. This prison became mythical when Alexander Dumas made it the place where Edmond Dantès, the hero of his novel The Count of Monte Cristo , (1844) is locked up . But in addition to the romantic Dantès, here were other famous prisoners - some pure legend - such as the man in the iron mask, the Marquis de Sade or General Jean-Baptiste Kléber when he returned from Egypt (in fact, his body was, because he had already died in Cairo).
The If castle functioned as a state prison from 1580 to 1871 and its strategic location allowed it both to shelter inmates and to protect the city from possible invasions. After its closure and until 1950 it only had the lighthouse keeper and his family as residents. Today it is very easy to get in and out of it without having to jump into the sea, as the famous Count did: you just need to board a ferry from the Vieux Port.
Feeling like a real prisoner
Karosta (Liepaja, Latvia)
It is still possible to feel the force and rawness of the KGB interrogations in a former military prison on the Latvian Baltic coast. Karosta functioned as such until a few years ago (1997), but now it is an interactive museum where visitors put themselves in the shoes of the anti-Stalinists and deserters who populated its gloomy spaces. But the visits are not the most classic: visitors (or temporary inmates) are photographed, examined, shouted at, and pushed through the holes and corners of this (haunted, it is said) barracks.
To live this experience of feeling in a real prison there are also macabre night circuits, which include a prison ranch and a stay in a cell (mattress, metal cup and little more). You can sleep in their uncomfortable cells and, if desired, be treated like a true Nazi deserter or an enemy of the Stalinist regime. And, incredible as it may seem, there are also special tours for schools.
Karosta is five kilometers from Liepaja, on the west coast of Latvia, and is an experience only for true addicts to prison tourism.
In the horror of the fields of death
Tuol Sleng (Phnom Penh, Cambodia)
In 1975, this former institute in the Cambodian capital was converted into a prison where the Khmer Rouge inflicted indescribable suffering on the regime's alleged enemies. The classrooms became torture chambers while the blackboards and books were replaced by horrifying instruments, designed to extract information without skimping on pain. Tuol Sleng - also known as S-21, his code name - was closed in 1979 following the overthrow of Pol Pot and a terrible count of some 17,000 inmates killed (among men, women, and children). So that these atrocities are never forgotten, today you can walk through the classrooms and hallways, between photographs of the victims and the story of what happened in this place.
12 kilometers southwest is the so-called Choeung Ek death camps, where numerous inmates were executed. It is a thrilling experience. Cambodians have free access as a measure to promote the so-called memory tourism and that the memory of something they hope is never repeated is kept forever among the population. A good complement to the visit is to see the award-winning film The Screams of Silence ( The Killing Fields , 1984), by Roland Joffré, based on the experiences of three journalists during the Khmer Rouge regime.
Accompanying Marie Antoinette
La Conciergerie (Paris, France)
From its splendor to the rawness of the revolutionary guillotine, this ancient medieval palace located on the Île de la Cité, surrounded by the Seine, has a most turbulent past. The Conciergerie, home of the Sainte-Chapelle, an exquisite example of the Gothic style - it is essential to admire the mastery of its stained glass windows - became the main detention center for reactionaries during the French Revolution. Its dark and stinking cells housed opponents of the new regime during the Reign of Terror (1793-1794), when more than 2,700 souls were sentenced to death and guillotined. Among them, the famous Queen Marie Antoinette. The prison occupied the ground floor of the building and the two towers. Upstairs, meanwhile, the work of Parliament was going on.
The Conciergerie maintained its prison function throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries; in 1914 it was declared a historical monument and opened to the public. Today you can see inside, including a reconstruction of the old revolutionary prisons, Marie Antoinette's own cell and, of course, the guillotine.
Beyond the horror
Auschwitz-Birkenau (Oswiecim, Poland)
It embodies the archetypal representation of the Nazi concentration and extermination camps, which went far beyond mere reclusion centers; Auschwitz, among others, welcomed human barbarism to its highest degree. It is about 43 kilometers east of Krakow and was the largest extermination center of Nazism. Under the direction of cruel Heinrich Himmler, 1,300,000 people were imprisoned in their barracks, of which 1,100,000, mostly Jews, never left this place. Released by Soviet troops in 1945, today it is much more than a museum, it is a crude monument that recalls what the Holocaust meant.
Declared a world heritage site in 1979, your visit is impressive: after passing the door where you can read the Arbeit macht frei sign (the work makes you free, in German), you can see the old barracks, the gas chambers, the cremation ovens and a collection of objects stolen from prisoners before they were executed.
Irish independence history
Kilmainham Gaol Prison (Dublin, Ireland)
The walls of this jail tell (loudly) the story of Irish independence. Here ended many of the rebels who fought for this cause, such as the leaders of the famous 1916 Easter uprising. One of them, Joseph Plunkett, married hours before his execution with Grace Gifford in the prison chapel, but instead After a honeymoon trip, he made his way to the firing squad. The story of their brief connection did not end there: Gifford was confined years later in this same prison and decided to decorate his cell with an image of the Virgin and the child.
Since 1971 Kilmainham Gaol has been open to the public, especially its Victorian wing. It was there that a large part of the film In the Name of the Father was shot in 1993, which tells the story and the judicial process of the Guildford Four. We will also recognize this prison in other films with a similar theme, such as Michael Collins (1996), which will take us, like the guided tour of the interior of cells and common areas, to the bowels of this emblematic Dublin building.
Spain, from the Middle Ages to the present day
Throughout the Spanish geography there are many “dungeons” and medieval prisons that can be visited, most of them inside castles. Although in Spain there is not yet a prison tourism as developed as in other countries. For example, in Pedraza (Segovia), we can enter the Villa Prison , imbued with its walls. It is managed by the Villa de Pedraza Foundation, which has rehabilitated this 13th century building where you can still see the two levels of dungeons: the upper one, for minor criminals, and the basement, where the most dangerous criminals were locked up. Everything, of course, with the cells, traps and shackles that one hopes to find in such a place.
In Broto (Huesca) you can enter a 16th century prison , blackened by the soot from the bonfires that the inmates made to warm themselves. Its walls are also full of engravings: primitive graffiti made by prisoners between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries with some sharp object, which are its greatest originality. The jail is a massive stone tower that initially served to defend the medieval bridge over the Ara River and Pontazgo, but was later transformed into a prison, with dungeons, gloomy corridors and chains, with which they tied prisoners to their feet. and hands to the walls.
We take a leap in time to discover the best example of an old provincial prison converted into a cultural space in Segovia. The Jail , where you can attend conferences, courses or exhibitions, promotes all kinds of creative projects and supports local creative industries. The center preserves the structure and distribution of the old prison (cells, patios, galleries), and for this reason it has also been used for filming movies ( Las 13 rosas , Torrente 4 ) and series ( Living without permission , Presumed guilty , Ladies of the Hampa ).
The Galician city of Lugo also has a prison rehabilitated as a cultural space. O Vello Cárcere hosts a permanent exhibition on the history of the building, as well as rooms for projects by artists, cultural and artisan associations, children's leisure spaces, a library and even an auditorium. Everything has been done respecting the original distribution of cells, galleries and other rooms typical of their former function.
Find inspiration for your next trips on our Facebook and Twitter and Instragram or subscribe here to the El Viajero Newsletter.
