La Catedral - Pablo Escobar's Luxury Prison

 

While in Medellin in early January, I paid a visit to La Catedral, on the outskirts of Medellin. This is where Pablo Escobar literally designed (and had others build) his own prison to serve jail time in, after the Colombian government agreed to this arrangement. Ats its heyday, the "prison" had a soccer field, Jacuzzi, a huge olympic sized pool, helicopter pad (for him to fly friends and family in for extravagant parties), and the now-famous torture chamber where he personally tortured those who went against him (see photos above). 

The compound sat on almost seven acres of land in the hills where Escobar had played as a child.  He chose a location that allowed a direct line of sight to the home of his family, and he even supposedly mounted a telescope so that he was able to see them (when they weren't visiting him in the prison).

"La Catedral was so extravagant, in fact, that it also boasted an industrial kitchen, a billiards room, several bars with big-screen TVs, and a disco where the drug kingpin actually hosted wedding receptions during his imprisonment. He feasted on stuffed turkey, caviar, fresh salmon, and smoked trout while in the arms of beauty queens."

Nowadays, the upper part of the huge prison is home to an elderly population who would otherwise be homeless, while the lower part is visited by hundreds of tourists curious about Pablo Escobar every month.  The final stop on the tour was to visit Escobar's family's graves in a cemetery just outside of the Medellin border.