Behind high walls in Berlin’s Lichterfelde, the past has been given a new role. Once a women’s prison, the listed complex known as The Knast now trades confinement for something altogether more enticing: privacy, intimacy and the freedom to disappear behind a locked door—this time entirely by choice. Since September 2026, guests can spend the night in what were once prison cells, in a boutique hotel where history is not erased but carefully woven into the experience.
The architecture itself provides the most compelling starting point. The original cell block remains unmistakable, its proportions and traces of institutional life lending the rooms an atmosphere no newly built hotel could easily reproduce. Rather than disguising the building’s history, the design embraces it. Original cell doors have been preserved, complete with historic bolts and now-covered peepholes, turning remnants of surveillance into intriguing details of a contemporary retreat.
On the first and second floors of the right-hand cell wing, nine rooms have been created by combining two to four former cells. Measuring between roughly 13 and 30 square meters, they retain the compactness of their origins while replacing austerity with bespoke furniture and carefully considered finishes. Metal becomes a recurring design language, echoing the bars that once defined the building, while anthracite—the dark shade historically associated with its walls—anchors the palette.
Then comes the twist: wine red. Used as The Knast’s signature color, it introduces a distinctly boudoir-like sensuality into the former institutional setting. Against the darker architectural framework, textiles and soft fabrics bring warmth and tactility, transforming spaces once designed for control into rooms intended for comfort, intimacy and pleasure.
Upstairs, four suites are being created in the converted attic, each with its own proportions, character and more extravagant details. They are conceived for longer stays, romantic escapes and occasions when a hotel room should feel like part of the story rather than simply a place to sleep.
Beyond the cell wings, a large garden offers another kind of escape, while the restaurant and bar extend the atmosphere into dining, drinks and late-night encounters. Yet the hotel’s real allure lies in its contradictions: hard architecture softened by textiles, institutional metal offset by wine red, historical surveillance transformed into privacy. THE KNAST does not attempt to make its past disappear. Instead, it makes history part of the seduction.
Works by local artists are displayed throughout the rooms.
Design
Axor
