Built in 1888 as a county jail to a design by architect Johan Jakob Ahrenberg, the rust-red brick complex on Helsinki's Katajanokka peninsula served as a working prison for over a century before its conversion into Hotel Katajanokka in 2007. The original cell block structure remains intact — thick load-bearing brick walls, barred windows, and the building's distinctive institutional massing all preserved as found — giving the hotel an architectural integrity that purpose-built properties rarely achieve. The conversion retained the granite base and the red brick of the facade without apology, the entrance staircase still carrying the civic weight of a nineteenth-century public institution. Inside, the interiors navigate the tension between the building's austere past and contemporary hospitality with considerable skill. Guest rooms arranged along former cell corridors show a palette of charcoal grey, deep crimson velvet curtains, and misty tree-motif wallpaper panels above the bed, framed prints of old padlocks and archival photographs keeping the carceral history present without gimmickry. The flooring shifts between patterned carpet with an ink-blot abstraction in some room categories and warm-toned timber planks in others. The restaurant and event spaces lean further into the raw material of the building — exposed aged brick walls lit from below by warm uplighting, globe pendants in smoked glass, long communal tables in reclaimed wood. The former cell doors, stainless-steel and original, remain visible in the banquet corridor, serving as the most direct acknowledgment of what this building once was.

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Home Hotel Katajanokka is a unique hotel in Helsinki where chic design, uncompromised comfort and personal service meet in a historic former prison setting - a short walk from the city center. Breakfast, "fika" and dinner are always included in the room rate.