The idea that we’re under constant surveillance seems familiar to many of us now. In 1870, the Dutch government turned to one of its most experienced architects to help realize this vision. There wasn’t enough space in the existing prisons to retrofit them with individual cells, so they’d have to build something completely new. So in the 1800s, a new idea took hold: solitary confinement got really popular, which led to a major design change: the rise of “cellular prisons”. The panopticon design is more than 200 years old, and it still shows up in popular culture, in productions like Star Wars and Guardians Of The Galaxy.Īrticle Prison-Go-Round: Rotary Jails Spin on Axis to Let Inmates Enter andĪs the prison system evolved, it became increasingly clear that grouping people together could be problematic, leading to all kinds of strife and helping to spread diseases. In the original design, all the cells are built around a central guard tower, designed to maintain order just by making prisoners believe that they are constantly being watched. The “panopticon” might be the best known prison concept in the world. When this place was first built in 1886, it was a penitentiary.
And behind most of these doors are small rooms that were once prison cells. Along the curved brick walls, there are hundreds of heavy orange doors spread out evenly across the four floors. Inside the building, there’s a wide-open circular hall the size of half a football field with the sprawling dome overhead. It’s a big, cylindrical structure, four stories tall, capped with this massive greenish-gray dome nearly a hundred twenty five feet up. But there’s one historic building – right in the middle of town that really stands out from the rest. Like many Dutch towns, it has cozy narrow streets, canals and plenty of bicycles.
In the Netherlands, about an hour and a half south of Amsterdam, there’s a city called Breda.
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