HMP Shrewsbury, also known as the Dana, was one of a number of prisons shut by the Ministry of Justice last March in a bid to save about Â£63m a year.
Bids from private companies are being invited.
John Yates, from English Heritage, said a list of historic buildings had been revised to show how potential developers could adapt the Grade II listed building.
He said it could become flats or a hotel.
"We can expect the prison to find an imaginative and, we hope, useful new purpose", he said.
A former prison in Shrewsbury, in Shropshire, is up for sale.