San Francisco (USA) - If you want to see the famous Alcatraz prison on an island off the coast of San Francisco, you will probably have a choice in future: you can either be a day tourist or a felon behind bars.

This is because US President Donald Trump (79) wants to turn the popular tourist attraction back into a prison for dangerous criminals .

So take the opportunity to come to Alcatraz as an innocent citizen.

The journey into the past leads to famous criminals, tactical showers and rare birds.

Alcatraz is the biggest tourist attraction in San Francisco. Visits must be booked online well in advance, and not just in the summer season.

As in prison times, the 1.5 kilometers to the island can only be reached by boat. Excursion boats transport hordes of visitors from Pier 33 to the island every day.

The difference from the prison days is that they are allowed to leave Alcatraz in the evening.

A visit is a mix of Sunday excursion, history lesson, flower and bird show with numerous wow effects.

After landing, you are given an audio guide at the visitor center, who becomes your personal prison guard during a tour lasting around two hours. Together with him, you go into the dining room, the library and, of course, through the dark cell wing.

The special thing about this is that the virtual guard doesn't just reel off history figures and cell dimensions. The scenes are accompanied by authentic sounds at the respective locations in the prison - from the clattering of spoons in the kitchen to the noise of prison riots and the typical closing sound of a cell door.

The 500-metre-long rugged rocky island was chosen for the construction of a high-security prison due to its secluded location and was opened as a federal prison on January 1, 1934.

Many civilians moved to the island as soon as it was put into operation. Prison guards and their families lived there - including 80 children. They played in the garden under the barred cell windows of the serious criminals.

Bed, toilet, washbasin. The prisoners' horizons were limited to the cell size of 2.74 m by 1.52 m almost around the clock. They only went outside to shower, walk around the yard or to the dining hall.

As you walk around the kitchen, you notice a large board with knives painted on it. "After kitchen duty, it was meticulously checked that every knife symbol was actually covered by a real kitchen knife," the audio guide explains.

Nobody was supposed to be able to acquire a murder weapon while peeling potatoes. Anyone caught anyway would spend days in solitary confinement. You can find out what it feels like in a dark solitary cell - at least for a few minutes.

You can easily spend a whole day on Alcatraz. After all, the island is also a birdwatcher's paradise. You can observe California gulls and great blue herons. If you haven't seen pigeon guillemots and brush shags yet, you can get to know them on Alcatraz.

Former inmate Robert Franklin Stroud was so fascinated by the island's birds that he became a recognized ornithologist while in prison. The National Park Authority of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area has declared special protection zones on the island during the nesting season where visitors are not allowed to disturb them.

It was the particularly escape-proof location in the middle of the sea that sealed the fate of the high-security wing. Because the salty air gnawed at the building, the prison was closed in 1963 - for cost reasons. Now Trump wants to turn back the clock and send the "most dangerous and violent criminals" back to Alcatraz.

So enjoy the return trip from the island at sunset - while you still can.

Tickets for the prison island are available from 47.95 US dollars (currently around 42 euros) at cityexperiences.com/san-francisco/city-cruises/alcatraz.

Until 1963, the maximum security prison Alcatraz was a kind of reformatory for notoriously conspicuous prisoners. Many of them had prominent names.

• Mafia boss Al Capone from Chicago was one of the first inmates, number 85, and was transferred to Alcatraz in 1934. He was isolated and attacked several times by inmates. He was released early on January 6, 1939 for good behavior.
• Violent criminal Robert Franklin Stroud had been in prison since the age of 19. As a convicted murderer, the rebel was sent to the prison island from 1942 to 1959. During his 54 years in prison, he became an ornithologist and wrote several specialist books.
• Machine Gun Kelly was transferred to Alcatraz in August 1934 and served time there until 1951. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for smuggling alcohol during the US Prohibition era and kidnapping. He acquired his nickname in order to gain a criminal reputation.
• Alvin "Creepy" Karpis was considered public enemy No. 1 in the 1930s due to a series of violent crimes. He was given the nickname Creepy ("scary") because of aggressive fights with other prisoners. He is considered the prisoner who spent the longest time in Alcatraz - more than 25 years from August 1936 to April 1962.
• Secret agent Erich Gimpel, a German spy during the Second World War, also served time in Alcatraz from 1945 until he was pardoned in 1955. He was actually sentenced to death, but President Harry S. Truman commuted the sentence to life imprisonment. On the island, Gimpel was Machine Gun Kelly's chess partner.

The heavy boys at Alcatraz were all hot showers, the guide in the washrooms tells us.

No other US prison had hot water for showers back then. What sounds like an easing of imprisonment was in reality an obstacle to escape.

The prisoners were accustomed to the warm water so that they would be deterred by the ice-cold sea water if they tried to escape.

This plan obviously worked. Just how perfectly the warm showers and the choice of prison location in San Francisco Bay alone were chosen for their purpose is proven by 14 unsuccessful escape attempts in the almost 30-year history of the federal prison.

All 34 escapees were recaptured or died in the unpredictable currents in the icy waters of the bay.