I spent a night in a 19th century prison in Beziers, a town in southern France. Fortunately, the prison — once home to a guillotine last used in 1949 — has been repurposed to accommodate visitors in this medieval city in southern France.
It’s called La Prison Hotel for good reason, but not just for its history. In cheeky ways, the property, which debuted in 2023, very much holds onto its past with unique design elements.
The hotel shop abuts the reception area; after hours, the shop is locked up with bars that give the appearance of a prison cell. In fact, the shop sells jumpsuits, in black though, not orange.
Reception desk at La Prison Hotel. In the background, the hotel shop, closed up during off hours by bars in keeping with the property’s origin story.
Or, in the case of rooms, those spaces weren’t designed to look like cells — they were cells.
The layout in my prison ward, with walkways overlooking an atrium that would give a warden a view of every door on several floors, is unchanged. My door was a prison door, and the room — er, cell — a narrow space with a vaulted ceiling, a narrow window (bars removed) and hangers, but no closet or minibar.
Atrium in La Prison Hotel, the same atrium that once served a prison cellblock.
The bed wasn’t nails — the mattress was superb — and the adjacent bathroom a gleaming modern affair.
I had a unit in the Standard Cell category, which accommodates two narrow beds. The bathroom was carved from half of the next-door cell. The other half of that cell became the bathroom for the cell two doors down the hall from me.
My room at La Prison Hotel, unabashedly Spartan because this was a cell. (Bathrooms are considerably less Spartan.)
As the property says on its website, La Prison “was never a castle, and therefore, our rooms are former cells. So staying with us will require a little flexibility of mind and body.”
When I chose La Prison last spring (2024), I viewed those features as entertainment. Besides, the location is the best. La Prison is in the forecourt of the 13th century Beziers Cathedral, which puts the hotel a 10-minute walk from the town center.
It also places the hotel right at the tip of a striking promontory that overlooks the Orb River, a 12th century bridge and a swath of town. The result is sweeping views from the hotel’s restaurant and from some cells.
Above, sweeping view of Beziers with its cathedral as the centerpiece at top and the town’s medieval bridge in the foreground. Below, closer in, La Prison Hotel in the foreground, with Beziers Cathedral in the background.
For more information about France, we offer at BestTripChoices.com the following, under the headline, S’il vous plait, at https://besttripchoices.com/france/
This blog and its photos are by Nadine Godwin, BestTripChoices.com editorial director and contributor to the trade newspaper, Travel Weekly. She also is the author of “Travia: The Ultimate Book of Travel Trivia.”
