Freshly painted walls in pretty pastel shades, the clean odour of detergent and, everywhere you look, glistening black floors. Welcome to Her Majesty's Prison Maze, more high-security B&B than oppressive Alcatraz.
At least that was the scene yesterday afternoon when a group of journalists were invited by the Northern Ireland Prison Service for one last look at the Maze. H-Block 5, one of eight, has been closed since January. The blocks that remain open will follow suit later this year. H5 is in what those in the Prison Service call "warm storage". There was even white linen, fresh out of its packaging, on the cell beds.
It was hard to believe this was the place where blanket and dirty protests were carried out in the mid-1970s and where, almost 20 years ago, prisoners smashed the furniture and lay in empty cells naked in their own excrement.
Or with "shite all over walls, water over floors . . . just a skimpy towel round the waist until 11.30 a.m. this morning when the whole wing was moved to H6 . . .". This is how one prisoner remembers one day in Block 5, as told to David Beresford for his book about the hunger-strikers, Ten Men Dead.
A minibus used to ferry prisoners in and out of the complex took this latest crop of visitors into the Maze. Through the clunk-clunking iron turnstiles and the security checks. Then a brief stop to examine the memorial to the 29 officers who lost their lives while on duty. A Prison Service source remembers another death, when LVF leader Billy Wright was shot in the forecourt of one of the blocks. "Anything was possible in this place," he said. "Anything".
Rusty razor wire is coiled along the two-mile perimeter. The place is a scrap-metal merchant's dream, an explosion of corrugated iron, with watch towers strategically placed to observe prisoners in the now-empty exercise yards below.
Standing in the forecourt of Block 5, the H shape seems smaller than all those aerial photos suggested. The roof is not as high as it looked on television when the protesters climbed upon it. Inside the door, to the left, is the control room. There are 10 redundant TV screens which once monitored the four wings of H-Block 5 and, on a shelf, a prison officer's discarded handbook which lists the "values" of the Maze; integrity and equality being just two. A Bible rests on the shelf above.
Wandering down the "leg" of the H is a claustrophobic experience. One after another, identical heavy grey doors lead into identical cells. There is a wardrobe, a potty, a bed, a mirror, a window with concrete bars. A button on the wall turns on the cell light and another raises the alarm. When this happens a little orange light flickers on the wall outside.
The regime in the prison in recent years has been free and easy, said the prison source. Inmates could leave the lights on all night, order what food they wanted, play their music as loud as they could bear. "The atmosphere was whatever atmosphere they wanted to create at the time," he said. There is a snooker table in mint condition in one of the rooms, and a gym in another.
The sounds of prisoners once carried all over the complex, but the only sound yesterday was the jangling of keys and the clanging of solid steel doors.
On the wall of a room used by prison officers, notices pertaining to H5 were still in evidence. "H5 Lottery", reads one, "please note we no longer do the Wednesday draw".