Google Sightseeing takes you on tour of the world as seen from satellite, using the free Google Earth program, or Google Maps in your web browser. Each weekday your guides James and Alex present new weird and wonderful sights as suggested by readers.

The editors: James & Alex

Prison on a Roundabout

Posted by Alex Turnbull, Monday, 29th September 2008

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Beaufort West is a town in South Africa, which must be the only town in the world to claim that it has a prison in the middle of a roundabout.

The town lies at the intersection of the N1 and N12 highways (two of South Africa’s busiest roads), and it’s the N1 that splits around the buildings. The prison was established in 1873, so presumably the road was divided to avoid the building, rather than this being some sort of primitive escape-deterrent!

Of all the people who drive around this roundabout every day, I wonder how many of them even realise they’re circling a prison?

Thanks to Fraser (again), via magnumphotos.com (which has some more information on the troubled town as well as an excellent, if not entirely SFW photo gallery).

4 Responses to 'Prison on a Roundabout'

  1. culprit says:

    the link for NSFW photos is expired…

    Not that I deliberately look for that sort of thing!….

  2. Here in Massachusetts we have a prison (actually the Placemark: Norfolk County Jail / Google Earth) in the median of I-95.

  3. Alex says:

    Thanks culprit – I’ve updated the post with a new link, which should hopefully work now? You’ll have to click through a couple of pages of the gallery to get to the NSFW stuff though. Er..

  4. Taia says:

    Rotaries and prisons. Not a prison actually IN a rotary, but also here in Massachusetts there’s a prison just south of the Concord Rotary on Route 2, with the state police barracks on the north side of the highway from the prison. And the open field above that is also police/prison-related land.

    Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth