The courtroom, designed by colonial architect James Barnet in 1886, is where you can experience the pomp and the power of the law. Stand within the spiked metal dock where offenders faced the wrath of the magistrate. Or sit behind the magistrate’s bench and think about passing judgment on others. Examine the robes and wigs, hallowed by tradition and symbolic of legal authority, then sentence yourself to a visit to the Crime & Punishment Room where the history of imprisonment in NSW is memorably evoked. Inspect the artefacts of corporal and capital punishment, among them a leather lash, a hangman’s noose, an isolation mask, a mouth gag, and various manacles, cuffs and physical restraints – all of them instruments of past inhumanity or of justified cruelty depending on your perspective.