Argentina Guide
Tierra del Fuego
Museo Marítimo y Presidio
Address: Daily 9am–8pm
Price: $30
Address: Yaganes and Gobernador Paz
Website: www.museomaritimo.com
You can visit the former prison to see the Museo Marítimo y Presidio. This houses a motley collection of exhibits, the best of which are the meticulous scale-models of famous ships from the island's history, and a much cruder, if equally painstaking, reconstruction of a Yámana canoe. The prison building itself, though, is the main draw, its wings radiating out like spokes from a half-wheel. The bare cells are complete with gory details of the notorious criminals who occupied them, but the impact is diminished for those unable to read the information boards, which are mostly in Spanish. The most celebrated prisoner held here was early twentieth-century anarchist Simón Radowitzsky, whose miserable stay and subsequent brief escape in 1918 are recounted by Bruce Chatwin in In Patagonia. There's a free guided tour of the museum's collections (daily 10.30am), which is the only time you're allowed to enter the otherwise locked scale-reconstruction of the former lighthouse on the Isla de los Estados, the inspiration for Jules Verne's Lighthouse at the End of the World. Outside the museum is La Coqueta, a locomotive once used to transport the prisoners to their daily toil of logging the forests. If you just want a look at the prison interior without having to pay the stiff entrance fee, have a coffee in the public café/restaurant in the main exercise hall (open until midnight).