The Pankrác prison is not as famous as Alcatraz, but is well known in Czech republic
History
The prison was built in 1885–1889 in order to replace the obsolete St Wenceslas Prison (Svatováclavská trestnice), which used to stand between Charles Square and the Vltava River. The site for the new prison was out of city limits, amidst of fields above Nusle suburb, in the time of its construction. Nevertheless, the expanding Prague encompassed the prison within several decades. A huge building of court was added to the facility in 1930s. During Nazi German occupation in 1939-1945 thousands of Czech people, from members of the Resistance to black marketeers, were detained here before having been sent to execution, to another prison within Germany or to concentration camp. In spring 1943 the Nazi Germans started carrying out executions directly inside the facility itself, where three cells had been adapted for this purpose. Between April 5, 1943 and April 26, 1945 a total of 1,079 people were beheaded by guillotine in Pankrác. The three rooms used for this bloody purpose (colloquially referred to as the sekyrárna, or axe room in Czech) have been preserved (incl. the execution device), and serve as memorial that is occasionally accessible to schools and public. [1] In the last decades before the abolition of capital punishment in Czechoslovakia the vast majority [2] of executions (by hanging) took place here, the last in 1989.
The present
According to an official report [3] of Prison Service the Pankrác Prison currently serves as a house of detention for accused males, and partly as a prison for sentenced males. The facility is designed for 858 inmates, of whom 468 are on remand and 390 are serving terms of imprisonment. Prisoners are accommodated in rooms with an average capacity of three beds, the largest containing ten beds. The prison premises also contain a Czech Prison Service hospital, serving the inmates, with a capacity of 111, as well as the Pankrác Memorial, [4] containing an exhibition on the Prison Service. The number of prison staff is 568 (2006).