The Alcatraz Hotel in Kaiserslautern belongs to Dr. Michael Koll, a lawyer by profession, who bought the abandoned prison from the state in 2005. “Those who come here to stay can truly feel what prison is like," “It’s like being in prison, but you can leave and go": says Dr. Michael Koll.

The hotel opened its doors exactly ten years ago, in September 2008. It was the first hotel of its kind in Germany, that is, a penitentiary institution converted into a hotel.

The prison was founded in 1877 by the Bavarian royal government and was closed by district authorities in the fall of 2002. It used to hold up to 150 inmates.

Guests can choose recently renovated rooms or a regular “prison cell.” All cells have toilets and sinks, just like in prison, and at the end of each floor there are separate male and female showers. All steel doors with food slots are original. Towels in black-and-white stripes are laid out in the rooms, the small windows have bars, and the windows have black-and-white curtains.

The brick wall, real prison gates, reception behind the “monkey house” bars, and cells with barred windows and minimal furniture — nervous guests are better off choosing regular rooms where nothing reminds them of a detention cell. However, from the “cells” you can freely access the Japanese garden at the hotel. The owner did not renovate part of the building at all and left it as a “museum of German prison life.” The hotel’s motto: “Unique, like a fingerprint.”

Sources:

http://alcatraz-hotel.com/index.php?lang=en

https://www.thelocal.de/20180828/a-night-in-the-hotel-that-used-to-house-some-of-germanys-most-wanted