By Alexander Shurochkin
Belorusskie Novosty
The Minsk authority has been thinking for over a year about moving the remand prison No. 1 of the Internal Affairs Department at the Minsk City Council on Volodarskogo Street (commonly called ‘Volodarka’ out of city, and to convert the building built in 1825 into a big commercial project, for instance, a hotel.
The punishment administration Committee of the Belarusian Ministry of Internal Affairs takes the possible move very positively as they understand that high walls with barbed wire do not adorn the central part of the capital. In addition, the inmates in the old building of the remand prison suffer from being overcrowded. The issue is stuck with finances. Constructing a new modern building for the remand prison is estimated to cost about 20 million US dollars. Naturally, it will take some efforts to find an investor who would make use of the building previously occupied by people in stripy robes.
The city authority has worked out several offers that might be of some interest to potential investors. One of them is to convert ‘Volodarka’ into a prestigious hotel, having kept the prison spirit. Hotels of this sort are quite popular and profitable.
This project is the most likely one to be used for the prison building at Volodaskogo Street. According to Director of the Architecture and Planning Committee at the Minsk City Council Ruslan Belogortsev, “Syrian and Iranian businessmen show a great interest to this building”. However, the chief architect said in his interview to ‘The Belarusian News’ that negotiations with potential investors go as far as intention protocols for the time being. 
“The project includes not only building a hotel instead of the remand prison, but also relocating the latter out of Minsk as it is stipulated by the Capital General Development plan till 2030. It will require huge money that the city hasn’t got, and investors know how to be careful with it as well,” says Ruslan Belogortsev. “Nevertheless, the work is going non-stop as far as the city authorities and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are concerned.
In general, Minsk might increase the large number of cities, that had hotels or amusement centres for tourists built where prisons used to be.
One of the most prominent places of this sort is the Alcatraz prison. The unassailable fortress was located on an island not far from San Francisco, and only movie heroes managed to escape from it. This dungeon has not seen a real criminal for over 30 years now – only tourists, who are willing to pay quite a bit for a pleasure of spending several hours in a prison cell, enchained, wearing prison robes.
The hotel in place of the old prison Long Holmen in Stockholm is very popular too. One night in a cell costs about 145 US dollars. Similar impressions can be obtained at a cheaper rate at Brixton prison in London, where for 80 pounds you will have to keep to the strict prison order, live off scarce inmate’s provision, and once a day go out for a walk into the prison yard.
The new owners of the Pekilla in Mexico have gone even further. For your own money, they will wake you up at five o’clock in the morning, feed you with the prison skilly, and take you out to work in the fields.
The oldest penitentiary institution in Malaysia, prison Johor Baru was converted into a hotel as well. The price rates there are more attractive than in Europe – one night with all prison facilities will cost only 50 local ringgits (around 16 dollars).
The sorrowful fame of the most renowned prison in the German Democratic Republic has disappeared into the past. Castle Hoen-Ek in Shtolberg was used both for criminal and political inmates. The prison was known for the fact that punishment cells or stone baths for tortures with icy water had never been empty and out of use. After the Berlin Wall collapsed, the prison welcomed Russian-speaking visitors who were seeking fortune in the German land. Their impressions were printed and put on the walls in the cells. This all can be seen exclusively at the evening excursions, after which anyone willing can be locked up in the castle overnight.
The Minsk ‘Volodarka’ also has long and interesting history. The building itself was built in 1825 according to architect Rudolf Pischalo’s design and was called ‘Pischalo castle’ for a long time. The classics of the Belarusian literature served their sentences there: Vintsent Dunin-Martsinkevich, Karus Kaganets, Yakub Kolas, who is said to have found the idea for the ‘New Land’ poem in these chambers. The ‘Pischalo castle’ also ‘sheltered’ some participants of the 1863 rebellion.
Some heroes of recent Belarusian history have also visited ‘Volodarka’. Former Prime Minister Mikhail Chigir had to wait for the final Court decision, former Minister of Agriculture Vasily Leonov, former Parliament Member Andrey Klimov, former Ambassador in Latvia Mikhail Marinich, former Director of the ‘Atlant’ factory Leonid Kalugin, Deputy Chairman of the Belarusian Popular Front Yuri Khodyko, one of the social-democratic movement leaders Nikolay Statkevich, only one day was spent there by former Director of the Belarusian Television Company Yegor Rybakov. In a word: the gallery of the ‘Volodarka honourable guests’ might occupy more than one wall in the old castle.
By the way, there is even a song dedicated to ‘Volodarka’. It was written by popular Belarusian cabaret singer Viktor Kalin. Looking at the feedback on this song on the singer’s Internet site, the lyrics have hit the mark.