Spike Island
Despite its serene setting, Spike Island in Cork harbor, Ireland, was once a place no man would choose to visit. Indeed, the island's dark past as a Victorian prison is part of the reason it attracts visitors today.
John Crotty
A secret stone staircase, missing from 1804 plans, was recently uncovered during excavation work.
Spike Island
The prison housed convicts from 1847 to 1883. "There were a lot of prisoners who were there for things we would not regard as crime today, and sentenced to hard labor," says historian Gillian O'Brien of Liverpool John Moores University.
Spike Island
A number of accounts from the time detail how solitary confinement in the prison's punishment block was like "hell on Earth." Over 1,000 prisoners died on the island and were buried in mass unmarked graves.
Spike Island
O'Brien says that people are generally fascinated by "dark tourism" -- sites that are associated with misery, suffering, death and incarceration. "Spike Island very much fits into that category," she adds.
JOSH EDELSON/AFP/AFP/Getty Images
But Spike Island is not the only prison island turned tourist destination. Alcatraz off the San Francisco coast operated as a U.S. federal penitentiary for nearly 30 years before closing in 1963.
ROBYN BECK/AFP/AFP/Getty Images
Today, visitors flock to the island to experience the infamous maximum-security prison for high-risk convicts.
AFP/Getty Images
Famous island residents included "Machine Gun" Kelly, Al Capone and Robert "Birdman" Stroud.
Hoberman Collection/UIG via Getty Images
Another notorious island off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa, Robben Island, served as a maximum-security prison during the apartheid regime.
RODGER BOSCH/AFP/Getty Images
The island was mainly used to house political prisoners like revered anti-apartheid revolutionary Nelson Mandela, whose cell is pictured here.
Brian Bahr/Getty Images
The island is now a World Heritage Site, popular tourist destination, and symbol of strength of the human spirit.
JODY AMIET/AFP/Getty Images
Off the coast of French Guiana on the north Atlantic coast of South America is Devil's Island, a former penal colony where deported French convicts were imprisoned from 1852.
JODY AMIET/AFP/Getty Images
The island was known for its harsh punishments and underfeeding of prisoners who were assigned to hard labor. The brutal penal colony finally closed in 1953.
Courtesy of Parco Nazionale Arcipelago Toscanoo
The famous 19th century penal colony that inspired Alexander Dumas's "The Count of Monte Cristo" novel is situated in the Tyrrhenian Sea west of Tuscany, Italy. Today Montecristo allows just 1,000 visits per year and has a long waiting list.

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One of Mexico’s most notorious prisons begins a new chapter this weekend as a Pacific Ocean getaway after a makeover aimed at bringing in tourists to the former penal colony.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Friday evening opened the Islas Marias Tourist Center, bidding to turn the decades-old federal prison in the Islas Marias archipelago into an environmental attraction and place for history lovers.

“This is tourism for excursions, to explore, to live with nature,” Lopez Obrador said this week. “To recreate history, it’s something exceptional, extraordinary.”

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Alongside villas to lodge guests, a restaurant, a cafe and beaches, the revamped site includes an arch named after Nelson Mandela, who spent some 18 years behind bars on South Africa’s Robben Island before being elected president of the country.

Mandela is “an example that even behind prison walls, ideals and change can live on for those who want to change history,” Mexico’s government said in a promotional video.

Raquel Cunha/Reuters
The exterior of the new Islas Marias cultural center.

Located about 62 miles off the western state of Nayarit, the Islas Marias became a prison in 1905 under dictator Porfirio Diaz and was in almost constant use until it was closed by Lopez Obrador in 2019.

The penitentiary once housed many political prisoners, including Jose Revueltas, an influential Mexican writer imprisoned several times for his left-wing activism.

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The government has announced tourist packages to the islands, with ferries to the main settlement of Puerto Balleto starting next week. The center will be run by the Mexican Navy and is part of a protected UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.

Mexico has enjoyed a post-pandemic tourist boom, with international arrivals to the country rising by 56.4% during the first 10 months of 2022 compared with the same period last year, and up 7.3% in comparison to 2019.