Lucerne

Europe's most unusual hotels: #5

Lonely Planet Magazine put together their list of Europe's 20 most unusual places to stay - beds in wine barrels, glass igloos in Lapland, that kind of thing. We picked our five favourites and we're counting them down all this week. First up? A kooky lock-up in Lucerne.

Most people try to avoid or escape incarceration, but at the Swiss Jailhotel Löwengraben, you get locked up out of choice. Lucerne's least desirable address until 1998, the 19th-century prison has now been adapted to hold inmates of a very different kind. The simplest rooms are former cells, renovated to recreate the Spartan aesthetic of prison life, with sparse furnishings and shared bathrooms. The former prison library, however, is now a suite with floor-to-ceiling books, while the warden's office betrays the trappings of power with a formidable steel safe. The visitor's room is a stylishly designed suite that allegedly has the fewest ghosts, but the most thought-provoking experience is in the Barabas suite - it has a colourful painting depicting post-jailbreak scenes as imagined by a former inmate. Not surprisingly, there's also a bar called Alcatraz. Cells from £27, suites from £50.