Perhaps France’s most fabled jail, La Santé – where the former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has begun a five-year term for criminal conspiracy to raise campaign funds from Libya – is the last remaining prison inside the Paris city limits.
Located in the southern Montparnasse district of the capital, it opened in 1867 and was the scene of at least 40 executions, the last in 1972. Partially closed for renovation in 2014, the prison reopened five years later and houses more than 1,100 inmates.