Pankrác Prison
Guillotine used by Nazi Germans to behead members of the Czech Resistance. It had to be recovered from Vltava river, where it was disposed of by the German Nazis fleeing from the town in May 1945.
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 Location in the Czech Republic
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| Location | Prague, Czech Republic |
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| Coordinates | 50°03′31″N 14°26′20″E / 50.05861°N 14.43889°ECoordinates: 50°03′31″N 14°26′20″E / 50.05861°N 14.43889°E |
| Status | Operational |
| Capacity | 1075 |
| Population | 1051 (361 on remand, 690 convicted) (as of 2011) |
| Opened | 1889 |
| Former name | The Emperor's-King's prison for men in Prague C.k. mužská zemská trestnice v Praze |
| Managed by | Prison Service of the Czech Republic |
| Director | Col. Marian Prokeš |
| Street address | Soudní 988/1 |
| City | Prague |
| Postal code | 140 57 |
| Country | Czech Republic |
| Website | www |
Pankrác Prison, officially Prague Pankrác Remand Prison (Vazební věznice Praha Pankrác in Czech), is a prison in Prague, Czech Republic. It is located southeast of Prague city centre in Pankrác, not far from Pražského povstání metro station on Line C. It serves partially as a prison for persons awaiting trial and partially for convicted inmates. Since 2008, women have also been incarcerated here.
The prison was built in 1885–1889 in order to replace the obsolete St Wenceslas Prison (Svatováclavská trestnice), which used to stand between Charles Square and the Vltava River. The site for the new prison was out of city limits, amidst fields above Nusle suburb, in the time of its construction. Nevertheless, the expanding Prague encompassed the prison within several decades. At the time of its opening, the prison was a fairly modern institution with hot air central heating; solitary confinement cells had hot water heating. The prison had gas lighting and its own gasworks. It opened in 1889 under name "The Imperial-Royal prison for men in Prague" (C.k. mužská zemská trestnice v Praze).
The prison included bathrooms, classrooms (prisoners were obliged to attend various types of education), a lecture hall, gymnasium, 22 workshop rooms, 6 exercise yards, a Roman Catholic church, an Evangelic chapel, and a Jewish house of prayer. The bedroom section of the prison hospital had 22 rooms for patients from among the prisoners. A large building of Regional court was added to the facility in 1926 and since then it served as the largest of 37 Regional Court prisons for detainees and prisoners serving up to 1-year imprisonment terms. The court and the prison are connected by underground corridor.
In 1926 the prison was also approved for conducting capital punishment (by hanging). The first execution took place on 6 December 1930, when František Lukšík was hanged for committing a murder and robbery. Altogether 5 executions took place in the prison between 1930 and 1938, when the democratic First Czechoslovak Republic ceased to exist following the Munich Agreement and German, Hungarian and Polish occupation of the country's border areas.
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