19 Mar 2025
Great little alternative to the Doge's Palace, just on the opposite side of the bridge.
The Prison Palace is where the 'new' prison was built as the Doge's side was not enough. You don't get to go on the Bridge of Sighs with the tour we had.
We opted for the guided tour, called "Lords of the Night Prisons Palace: Cells and torture tools."
It was such a good tour, really nicely run, informative, and ended up just being the two of us, so was like a private tour!
We were told the history of the prison, given a tour of the cells and some great info. The tour was around 45 minutes long, and then we could explore at our leisure, which gave us time to read the information and look at anything not covered in the tour.
It is definitely not for those who don't want to know about some of the more gruesome elements of life in medieval times, i.e. imprisonment cells, tools of interrogation, torture, and sometimes execution.
We bought tickets 24 hours in advance, but there was no queue anyway, it was really empty, definitely somewhere that is missed because everyone goes to the other side of the bridge, where there was a huge queue.
Lots of stairs and some uneven flooring in places.
This review is also on Google with Viator referenced.