Mazas Prison stood near the Gare de Lyon as a stark, pentagonal fortress designed to enforce absolute isolation. Inaugurated in eighteen fifty, it featured twelve hundred individual cells arranged in a fan-like layout that allowed guards to monitor detainees with invisible, constant surveillance. Architects Émile Gilbert and Jean-François-Joseph Lecointe built the structure from stone, brick, and iron to embody a rational system of moral reform, replacing the older, communal jails of the city.
Mazas Prison
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