Most visitors to Lushun head straight for the notorious prison that, from 1902 to 1945, housed more than 450,000 war prisoners captured by the Russians, then the Japanese. Visitors are escorted on the half-hour by Chinese-speaking guides through a series of carefully preserved red-brick buildings. Sombre displays, including an unearthed wooden-barrel coffin containing an executed inmate, and torture devices accompanied by graphic descriptions, paint a picture of a working early-20th-century jail.
English captions illuminate the plight of prisoners, surveillance strategies, work camps and more.
Bus 3 (¥1, 15 minutes) from opposite the bus station terminates outside the prison.