I'm going to Cuba in the summer and striking out independently from Havana. I'm hoping to get away from the main tourist centres and want to visit the island where Castro was imprisoned in the 50s. Is it easy to visit the island and is the prison still there in use, or open to the public? John Cummings, Tamworth

Sunday Times travel expert Richard Green responds: You are thinking of Isla de la Juventud, just off the south west coast, where Fidel was incarcerated from 1953 to 1955. It's a very laid-back place, with some beaches, lots of cattle farming, and the atmospheric Presideo Mondelo.

You'll see the four gasometer-sized towers of the prison long before you reach its gates. It's best to take a taxi, as it is just three miles east of the sleepy little capital of Nueva Gerona.

It's a Panopticon type prison, built in the 1920s from an 18th century design by the eccentric Jeremy Bentham. He's the chap who's sat displayed in a wooden cabinet at University College London since his death in 1823 ­ on his instruction you understand.

The prison's fiendish circular buildings allows the wardens to observe the prisoners without them being aware of it, achieved with cells facing inwards and a watchtower at the centre with tiny slit windows. The prison was designed to house 6,000 inmates in four five-story circular buildings, with prisoners eating in a central building connected by underground passageways so they never were in the open.

However, Fidel and 25 revolutionary friends were put in a less fearful outbuilding and were oddly allowed to set up a revolutionary school called the Academia Idelogica Abel Santamaria - where the group studied revolutionary theory and guerrilla tactics. Castro did get a spell in solitary confinement for heckling a presidential visit.

The last prisoner went home from the Presidio in 1967, but the site is well worth a visit ­ there's a small museum and the Academy and revolutionary cells have been preserved as a national monument.

Getting to the island is easy, just a 40-minute hop from Havana to the island's main city, Nueva Gerona, with return fares on Cubana from £42, bookable through Alternative Airlines (0871 222 9222). Or if you have the time, make your way to the southern port of Batabano, and catch the ferry from there.

For more information and to see what the design actually looks like, visit http://presidiomodelo.blogspot.com. For the rest of the island, there's www.isla-de-juventud.com

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