The site of the former Cherche-Midi prison is now occupied by the École des hautes études en sciences sociales. Before this academic building stood here, a military prison operated on this ground for nearly a century, from eighteen fifty-one until nineteen forty-seven. Its layout featured two hundred solitary confinement cells, inspired by the design of Auburn prison in New York, where inmates were kept in isolation at night and forced into silent labor during the day.
Cherche-Midi prison
event
The audio tour continues in the Mira app →