Experience the dramatic award-winning museum
The walls of the old Horsens State Penitentiary could tell many violent, fantastic and fascinating stories. As a guest at the museum, you are guaranteed to have a unique, thoughtful and memorable experience you will never forget.
As soon as you enter Europe's largest prison museum, all your senses are brought into play. The exhibitions offer experiences that can be seen, heard and smelt. Precisely for this reason, a tour of the fantastic building is a great experience for both children and adults. And this is why the museum has repeatedly won awards for its exciting exhibitions. You are given the exceptional opportunity to get behind bars and meet former inmates as shadows on the walls. Life in the PRISON and the story of the Danish prison system are also told through the use of screens, telephones and intercoms.
On the walls, doors and closets, you can read the sometimes vehement, sometimes humorous messages from the inmates painted or drawn as an eternal reminder of their time in the state penitentiary. Together with the digital tools, they help to tell the authentic story of life behind bars.
Lorentzen’s incredible escape tunnel
Experience the impressive, 18-metre-long tunnel by escapee Carl August Lorentzen that led from his cell to freedom. Digging such a tunnel required an enormous amount of hard work, dedication and perseverance. The inspiring story of Lorentzen was then on everyone's lips and it taught the Danish people that "Where there is a will, there is also a way".
The dark dungeons
The underworld - this is what the prison museum calls its most recent exhibition which can be viewed in the old dungeons. The dark cellar was once used for punishing, executing and disciplining the inmates and this is your chance to see the gloomier side of the prison with its painful tools for punishment.
The many exciting stories
Learn about Horsens State Penitentiary's role during World War II. And get to know Werner Best - the leader of the German Armed Forces who was sentenced to death after the war and served time in Horsens.
See where and how inmates sentenced to death were executed in the early days of the prison in the 19th century. And how did you go about things when inmates got married and wanted romance?
The Prison Museum is filled with captivating tales. But do not worry, the prison no longer holds inmates. So, unlike the great escapee Carl Lorentzen who always dreamt of freedom and thus dug his way out of the Horsens State Penitentiary, you are free to leave again.
