Paper Short Abstract:

Algeria became a French settler colony in 1830. Since 1962 independence, colonial prisons are razed or repurposed as museums. How are penal buildings, inscribed with perpetrator history, rehistoricized and reappropriated? I focus on Algiers’ Serkadji / Berberousse and Constantine’s Coudiat prisons.

Paper Abstract:

Constructed by the French military in 1856 on the Ottoman fortifications which guarded the Algiers Casbah, Berberousse / Serkadji Prison was inscribed in Algeria’s national patrimonial register in 1992 and decommissioned as a penal institution in 2014. It is currently in the planning stages for conversion to a museum, an official Algerian government project undertaken by the Ministry of Justice, the Directorate of Prisons, and the state’s own architectural unit and design office. In contrast, transforming Constantine’s Coudiat Prison, erected in 1857, is an initiative by that city’s local preservation society formed in 1989 under Algeria's new liberal association laws. In 1992, they listed the buildings as official Algerian national patrimony and authorities agreed to a museum project in 2013. However, the still-functioning prison was never closed. I discuss the preservation society's detailed proposals submitted to the authorities to evacuate the current prison population and compare it with the project for the Algiers Prison. Both prison conversion proposals model potential museum exhibitions about storied political prisoners since the French occupation of Algeria (1830-1962). These museum proposals to be discussed include exhibition spaces, archives and library, conference halls, and a restaurant and teahouse specializing in Algerian gastronomy.