Windows of Caen

We saw these two windows in one of the streets of the Caen city. This triggered some thoughts, first over the reasons of just creating a wall in place of a window, and over the two choices if those rooms belong to two separate rooms. One, the one with the bars giving you visual access to the outside world, and the second one, completely isolating you from the outside world. Which room do you think would make someone happier, providing that someone spends all its life in it? Both confine one to a limited space, and one of them does not present any more than what it actually is, a nice room, while the other gives you the exact same thing, with a glimpse of what life could be (but is not for you, with the bars stopping you from reaching it).