Hotel Liberty

A 19th-century prison enjoys a second life as a luxury hotel in Offenburg, Germany

- Rebekah Heaney

In 1843, amidst the hills of Germany’s southern Rhineland,Grand Duke Leopold von Baden built a prison in the city of Offenburg. Accommodating 40 inmates, the failedBaden Revolution stocked it with political radicals in 1949. Whilst the prison was eventually decommissioned, the staid, imposing structure remained, making it an unlikely spot for a luxury hotel - even one as ironically named as the Hotel Liberty.

But it was armed with this tongue-in-cheek attitude, as well as an awareness of the site’s history and legacy, that a team of architects, designers and contractors set out to rejuvenate the prison. ‘It was a challenging project for us’, explain the team at Practice Knoblauch, which oversaw the renovation, from planning to construction and fit-out, alongside architects Jürgen Grossman and Konrad Knoblauch. ‘We had to try to understand the world of a prisoner, while incorporating the sensitive heritage of the jail into a new hotel’.