The Saxon Hotel in Johannesburg :: Opulence in a High-Security Prison
The Saxon Hotel in Johannesburg takes the meaning of 'surreal' to a new level. It's an over-the-top opulent boutique hotel inside what looks and feels like a high-security prison.
Johannesburg, the largest city in South Africa, has a reputation for being dangerous--or at least, it's dangerous to be rich. And the Saxon Hotel is where the Really Rich stay. It's a 24-room boutique extravaganza of a hotel, but for security reasons it's set behind a 10-ft. stone wall topped with barbed wire and lined with armed guards.
The entrance roads are a kind of maze, with various gates opening at various unpredictable times to throw would-be robbers off the scent--you have to wait for a hotel car to guide your taxi through the maze. The grounds are large so you can't see all this from the hotel itself, but it's an unsettling experience.
