The Pays de Fontainebleau Tourist Office and the Ministry of Justice are organising guided tours of the National Museum of Prisons as of next February (see below for dates of coming tours).

These grouped individual visits will enable you to discover Fontainebleau’s former gaol, a both impressive and unusual site, and national collections rich in original documents and objects.

The Ministry of Justice has recently undertaken numerous refurbishments to enable the public to discover these astonishing collections evoking France’s penitentiary history.
To encourage the discovery of this remarkable and original museum, the Ministry chose to entrust the tours’ organisation to the Tourist Office of the Pays de Fontainebleau.

A unique museum in Europe
The idea of such a museum, open to the public, arose during the Universal Exhibition of 1889, for which a temporary penitentiary museum was opened.

Upon its closure in 1990, the Fontainebleau gaol was chosen by the penitentiary administration as the site for the National Museum of Prisons, where the history of the carceral world could be retraced from the 17th century to the present.

This majestic building is very representative of the carceral architecture of the 19th century. You will certainly be impressed by the magnificent detention nave with its gangways on two floors, around which thirty-odd cells are arranged.

During the tour, the Tourist Office lecturers will help you to better understand the world of the prisoners through exceptional collections: furniture, doors, machines and objects from everyday life, the most unusual and bizarre forbidden objects, anthropometric photographs, precious works, handwritten letters by prisoners none other than François Villon, the Marquis de Sade, Mirabeau, Jean Genêt, Louis Ferdinand Céline…

In summary, the Fontainebleau Prison is first and foremost

- A place of institutional memory
- A place of civil education through history
- A place of conservation of the national heritage

For lovers of history, originality, or discovery, do not hesitate any longer and come to sign up for the next guided tour. You can prepare your visit by discovering the Museum of Prisons on the website : www.justice.gouv.fr/musee

For individuals :
The price of a guided tour for individuals grouped together is € 8.00 for adults and € 6.50 for children aged from 6 to 12.

For groups :
The guided tour price is € 8.00 per person, minimum 20 people.
School groups: € 6.50 per person, minimum 20 people.

Inscriptions :
Office de Tourisme du Pays de Fontainebleau,
4 rue Royale - 77300 Fontainebleau
Or contact us on 01 60 74 99 99