Former Meiji-era prison near Nara Park has just welcomed its first overnight guests – and the cells have never looked better.
For 116 years, the red-brick buildings of Nara Prison processed some of Japan’s most troubled cases. Last week, they checked in their first hotel guests.
Hoshino Resorts has completed a seven-year restoration of the 1908 facility, originally built as a model of rehabilitative reform and one of the more striking landmarks of the Meiji modernisation era, transforming it into Hoshinoya Nara Prison, a 48-suite luxury hotel that opened on 25 June.
The architecture has been handled with care. Four of the prison’s five radial wings have been converted into guest accommodation, with each suite formed by combining nine to eleven original solitary cells into a single expansive living space. Hand-laid brickwork and steel pillars remain intact throughout; what has changed is everything around them.
The suites are intentionally free of electronics and timepieces — an invitation, the hotel suggests, to slow down and sit with the particular atmosphere of the place. The former detention hall, meanwhile, has been reimagined as a French-inspired restaurant, with guided museum tours of the wider site launching this July.
The project is part of Japan’s broader “heritage cycle” initiative, which looks to tourism as a means of sustaining ageing cultural properties that might otherwise fall into disrepair.
General manager Masaya Kakegawa said: “We want to pass on the history and value of this building to future generations.” Nightly rates begin at 147,000 yen ($909).
