Handcuffs are included in the room rate, sir

I've packed some light reading, a toilet roll (just in case), a towel and an electric toothbrush. My guide and interpreter Evija said nothing else is needed for a night in Liepaja's most unconventional hotel. All other comforts are presumably laid on.

Wrong. No comforts are laid on, at all. This 'hotel' proudly bills itself as 'unfriendly, unheated, uncomfortable and open all year round'. But that's the point. A stay here is reality tourism writ large, a chance to experience at first hand (albeit handcuffed for part of the time) the brutal, degrading regime of a damp, rotting red-bricked naval jail built in 1905 to house the czar's mutinous sailors. New management took over in the 1970s: the KGB.

I arrive at the prison after a £2 taxi ride from Liepaja on a road which dissects an asphalt plant and a herring smoking facility. My nostrils are still burning as I enter the 'reception', a dark corridor that smells of damp and reeks of suffering, through a rusting, squeaking, iron-grill door, laced with barbed wire. The concierge is a 6ft 4in tall hulk of a man, dressed in a dark blue Soviet naval sub-lieutenant's uniform, barking orders in Latvian; a stern chap who won't allow any personal effects but a toothbrush.

This jail once housed soldiers of a criminal bent, not political dissidents, and torture was psychological, not physical. After 'check-in', we line up in twos in the cobbled courtyard, as the guard outlines what we can and can't do - basically, we can do anything he tells us to do. We file in, double time, into the dank corridor and are made to squat, hands behind head.

To wipe off any smirks from our faces, a gun is fired into the corridor above our heads to warn us what happens if we try to escape. No one ever did. We are then marched into a cell, in fours, to face the wall. One Latvian girl starts crying - the 10 minutes of squatting have hurt her back.

A medical exam follows, held in a solitary cell with ominous-looking medical equipment laid out. I have visions of a school medical, but fortunately matron elicits by verbal means that I'm unsporty, with a bad back - wrenched on the three-hour charabanc ride over pitted roads from Riga - and a penchant for the local 60p-a-pint beer.

I'm photographed and given a prison passport, then marched into another room, where I'm quizzed on Latvia by a navy rating beneath a Lenin portrait.

I could tell him Liepaja is Latvia's third-largest city, with 80,000 people, a town once seriously under the thumb of paranoid authorities due to its naval base. You had to have special permission to visit Liepaja; its fine long white beach off-limits to all. 'Liepaja is now famed for its music and musicians,' I declare. He's not impressed and a five-minute spell in solitary follows, a chastening experience, even if we are play-acting.

In another room, the walls 'decorated' with portraits of generals and admirals, we are given a meal - a stale hunk of rye bread, some pickle and sweet Russian tea. Next it is bedtime, a process involving hauling a heavy pallet

from the corridor, laying a thin mattress and blanket over it and making your 'bed' to strict army codes. If done shoddily, the commandant will make everyone else in your damp, dark, cold cell do it again.

Evija tells me guests then have four minutes for ablutions, including a visit to the 'toilet' - three rustic holes in the ground - and a rusting tap to brush your teeth. From now on it's lights out and strict silence, although the management has the right to wake you whenever it wants with midnight square-bashing and other such group entertainment. The hotel's 'extreme package' starts at 9pm and finishes at 2.30am. Unlike the original inmates, visitors are free to leave at any time, though lots stay till check-out time - 7.30am, prompt, no breakfast. Many visitors are so jolted by the experience they reject the sleepover.

So who does stay here? Evija says the prison is becoming popular with Latvian stag groups, college kids, and there is growing interest from corporate team-builders looking for an unusual 'bonding' experience for their employees. Some 21,000 'guests' checked in last year. Most were school groups, coming by day for a two-hour package.

And what of the 'guards'? Actors. Former prison guards, some of them.

I can't say I'd recommend the food, the service, the accommodation or the location, but for a sobering and memorable experience, a night at Liepaja prison is hard to beat. And at just £7 a night, it's better value than many youth hostels I've stayed in.

Essentials

Baltic Adventures (01582 462 283; www.balticadventures.co.uk) offers packages from Thursday to Sunday including transfers, one night at a three-star hotel in Liepaja, a three-hour prison visit and two nights at a three-star hotel in Riga from £140pp, excluding flights. Air Baltic (00 370 5235 6000; www.airbaltic.com) flies to Riga from Gatwick, from £86 return.