Political prisoners were reportedly transferred from El Helicoide as activists challenged claims the prison had shut down ...

Editor’s Note: Editor’s note: Celeste Olalquiaga is a cultural historian with a PhD from Columbia University and the author of “Megalopolis” (1992) and “The Artificial Kingdom” (1998). In 2013, she ...

DYLAN Canache was just 16-years-old when he was thrown into Nicolas Maduro’s notorious torture prison. Inside El Helicoide, a ...

For the same reason that the regime still holds more than 400 political prisoners.

Nestled among a kaleidoscope of overlapping shanty homes and mountains cloaked in dense forestry, a giant pyramid-shaped building — once touted to become a world-leading retail mecca — towers over ...

Venezuela's "El Helicoide" was built back in the days of seemingly endless oil wealth and meant to be a flashy, space-age-looking shopping center. But this structure shaped like a three-sided pyramid ...

A renowned Venezuelan human rights activist was freed on Sunday (February 1, 2026) after more than four years in a notorious Caracas prison, saying he endured 1,675 days behind bars that were “too ...

El Helicoide was designed as a futuristic drive-in shopping mall with 300 shops, eight cinemas, a five-star hotel, and ramps ...

Perhaps modeling what would be the architectural icon of your country’s capital off the infamous Tower of Babel isn’t the best idea. But it wasn’t superstition that brought down the gargantuan spiral ...

CARACAS, Venezuela — Jesús Armas spent 14 months inside El Helicoide, a notorious prison built on top of a massive rock in the center of the capital Caracas. One of the things that struck him the most ...

In the centre of the Venezuelan capital Caracas, an extraordinary space-age building towers over the sprawling slums below. El Helicoide was once the symbol of a rich and promising nation. Today, it ...