Pack your best orange onesie pajamas and get ready to do the cellblock tango! No, this isn’t a game of Monopoly involving jail and hotels. Former prisons across Europe are now welcoming guests to voluntarily check in. Best of all, you can roam free and get released whenever you want.
Travelandleisure.com reports that because the incarceration rate in the Netherlands has significantly decreased in the last 10 years, prisons are sitting vacant—quite a stark difference from the overcrowding issue of American penitentiaries. Hotels such as Het Arresthuis in Roermond, the Netherlands, are transforming their buildings into luxury accommodations.
Het Arresthuis, which means “house arrest” in Dutch, is a great venue to host a small-scale meeting or event. The hotel offers meeting rooms for up to 28 people and dining for up to 120 guests. Their Galerij, situated in the middle of all the cells, has hosted sophisticated seated dinners with a long table down the center and an aerial act.
Hotel room doors still have the original jail cell bars, so careful not to lose your key! Helsinki, Stockholm and Oxford, England, have also transformed former prisons into hotels.
