Go to Gaol. Go Directly to Gaol.

For the most part, Australia has tried to expunge its origins as a penal colony. But in Melbourne -- coincidentally or not, the only major Australian city not founded primarily as a penal colony -- they've turned the old jail -- "gaol" in Olde English spelling -- into a tourist attraction:


Make that "gaols" in fact, as they show you both the one used for most of the 20th century:


And then, the much more horrifying one used in the 19th:


The 19th-century prison comes complete with a scaffold for hangings built into one of the balconies. This is where the "bushranger" Ned Kelly was hanged in 1880. From most of the prison cells, you can't see a hanging conducted here, but you certainly could hear it:


Fortunately, there haven't been any hangings here since the 1920s, and Victoria state abolished capital punishment completely in 1975.