You can book a bed on a former death row, and the hostel's own line for it is that you do not need to commit a crime to go to prison.
The building at 75 Nicholas Street in Ottawa was the Carleton County Gaol, better known as the Nicholas Street Gaol, and it was the city's main jail for over a century. Henry Horsey designed it and it was built in 1862 next door to the courthouse, connected to it by a tunnel.
It was the site of the hanging of Patrick J. Whelan on 11 February 1869, for the assassination of Thomas D'Arcy McGee. More than 5,000 people came to watch.
The jail closed in 1972. Hostelling International bought the building and converted it, deliberately leaving much of the structure intact so that guests genuinely stay in a jail rather than in a hotel that used to be one. The top floor, which served as death row, has been restored close to its original condition, and tours run daily.
It is now operated by Saintlo Hostels, which markets it plainly as Ottawa's historic jail hostel and runs its own exclusive guided tours of the building. The hostel previously partnered with The Haunted Walk and ended that arrangement in order to use the space for accommodation instead, which tells you something about the balance it is trying to strike between a working hostel and a heritage attraction.
The bar, Mugshots, opened to the public in 2009 and closed to the public in 2015. In July 2011 the old jail courtyard was converted into an outdoor bar for the summer months.
It is a genuinely strange place to sleep, and the strangeness is the honest kind: the cells are real, the corridor is real, and the man who was hanged here has a name and a date.
Other places on the map within a couple of hours.
