Sainte-Pélagie Prison

You are walking toward the former site of the Sainte-Pélagie Prison, a place that once held a unique, almost paradoxical role in Parisian life. Founded in the seventeenth century as a house of correction for repentant women, it evolved over time into a site that famously imprisoned many of the nineteenth century's most outspoken writers, radicals, and thinkers. Because so many political prisoners passed through its gates, the facility developed a reputation as a center for intellectual dissent rather than a traditional house of punishment.