Cherche-Midi prison

The Cherche-Midi prison occupies a space defined by high, windowless stone walls topped with shards of glass. Originally a seventeenth-century convent, it served for over a century as a military prison. During the Second World War, the German military police held captured resistance fighters here before their execution or deportation. In one notorious case, the writer Arthur Koestler spent several months locked in a cell here, carving his name into the wooden shutters while awaiting trial for his anti-Nazi reporting.