Cellular Jail
Sri Vijaya Puram (Port Blair), Andaman & Nicobar Islands
Cellular Jail is a former British colonial prison at Atlanta Point in Sri Vijaya Puram, the city long known as Port Blair. It is now a National Memorial and museum dedicated to the people imprisoned in the Andaman penal settlement, including many participants in India's freedom struggle.
The British established a penal settlement in the Andaman Islands in 1858. The high-security Cellular Jail came later. Construction began in the 1890s and the building was completed in 1906. Its seven wings radiated from a central watchtower and were designed to keep prisoners in solitary cells with almost no possibility of communication.
The prison became widely known as Kala Pani, or Black Waters. The name referred to transportation across the sea, separation from the mainland and the terror associated with imprisonment in the remote islands.
Current Visitor Information
Checked against the Andaman Tourism website on 30 July 2026. Timings and prices can change, so verify them before visiting.
1:30 PM to 5:00 PM
₹100 for foreign nationals
₹200 for video camera
Daytime museum entry and the evening Light and Sound Show are separate. The show currently costs ₹300 for adults and ₹150 for children aged 5 to 11. See the current show schedule and booking information.
Architecture and Layout
The original three-storey building had seven unequal wings arranged around a central watchtower. Its layout combined the Separate System, which placed each prisoner in an individual cell, with a surveillance design influenced by the Panopticon concept.
India's 2014 submission for the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List records 698 cells, each measuring about 13.5 feet by 7 feet. Other government and archival accounts provide different cell totals because they count different construction stages and later additions. Only three of the seven wings survive today.
Prisoners and Resistance
Prisoners were subjected to solitary confinement, hard labour, poor food, restraints and corporal punishment. Work included oil grinding, coir pounding, rope making and other physically demanding tasks. Political prisoners repeatedly protested their treatment, including through major hunger strikes in 1933 and 1937.
People imprisoned at Cellular Jail included Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Ganesh Damodar Savarkar, Barindra Kumar Ghosh, Ullaskar Dutt, Sachindra Nath Sanyal, Batukeshwar Dutt, Mahavir Singh, Mohan Kishor Namadas and Mohit Moitra, among many others.
Getting There
Cellular Jail is in central Sri Vijaya Puram and can be reached by taxi, auto-rickshaw or local tour vehicle. The official tourism website lists the Directorate of Tourism helpdesk at +91 3192 232694.
CellularJail.com is not the official website of Cellular Jail or the Andaman and Nicobar Administration. Official tickets and current government notices are available through Andaman Tourism.