Incredible transformation. Het Arrestuis - a prison yesterday, a luxury hotel today

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

As you know, from love to hate - one step, but from a prison to a luxury hotel, apparently, - one successful architectural solution. It is difficult to explain why the tendency to "retrain" prisons into hotels is gaining such popularity in Europe, but the fact that every country strives to acquire such an "architectural highlight" is no longer in doubt: "Prison hotel" Het Arrestuis in the Netherlands - a vivid example of this!

It would seem that it’s time to get used to the fact that there are many strange and sometimes inexplicable things in the world. But how can you not be surprised when you see how free people go on vacation to the Alcatraz hotel-prison in England, which is no different from a maximum security colony, and the real criminals are serving their sentences in the humane Norwegian Bastoy prison, which looks more like a boarding house? Today, the Norwegian prison-hotel Het Arrestuis has opened its doors to those who have not yet been “behind bars”.

The Het Arrestuis prison in the town of Roermond was built in 1862, and for one and a half centuries only prisoners were actually held here. Strange metamorphoses took place within these walls in 2007, when the prison was officially closed, and it was decided to equip a luxurious hotel. The calculation was quite daring: to offer potential clients to pay huge sums of money to spend the night in the former isolation wards. Of course, in order to attract guests, a major overhaul had to be carried out, during which 150 cells were converted into 40 spacious rooms: 24 standard rooms, 12 "suites" and 4 special rooms.

Het Arrestuis's "prison" past is only reminiscent of the stairs and "windows" on the doors of the rooms. The rest of the hotel impresses with its modern interior and luxurious furniture, it has everything you need for a comfortable stay: each room has air conditioning, a flat-screen TV, free Wi-Fi and even a coffee machine. The hotel has a sauna and fitness center to keep fit, while leisure hours can be spent in the picturesque courtyard with perennial olive trees and a lovely front garden.

The kitchen of the Het Arrestuis hotel will delight the most demanding gourmets; of course, guests will not have to sit on bread and water. In the Damiantz restaurant you can order a themed "prison" lunch: visitors are given a striped uniform characteristic of prisoners, but they are fed with delicacies that real prisoners never dreamed of.