Old Melbourne Gaol, Melbourne

Highly recommend visiting this place and doing the Watch house experience too. There was no wait to enter for us, 2 people. Basic entry to the gaol is $20 pp for adults, with the watch house guided tour it is $30 pp. You can't access the watch house by yourself, I think the 30 min guided tour on top of exploring the gaol yourself was worth it as it was quite different to what you saw in the gaol. It was very interesting to see how everything was operated, sometimes it was quite eery seeing some death masks and ropes that people have been hung with. There's a lot of information about Ned Kelly too. The gaol has 3 levels, you are able to go into cells on all floors with a lot of displayed objects and information plaques in most of them. What caught my eye the most was all the word/sentences carved into the doors and walls by the inmates including German war prisoners. Very interesting place and a heritage protected building, so be respectful.

We liked our visit to Melbourne Gaol. We spent an hour doing a self guided tour. The information in the cells is very interesting and informative. It was a great experience but it was ruined by the loud music next door. It was very annoying and distracting. We would have done the watchtower tour but the music put us off doing it.

The old Melbourne Gaol is a great place to experience Australian history. The detailed plaques in most cells have a personal insight and made it feel more real. I got the chills multiple times across cells covering three floors. Some dim lit cells and some cells with more light gave different vibes. Numerous etchings and messages left in the walls and doors added to the vibes - you'll just have to work through the disappointingly large amount of graffiti. Tour's were an option but queues were too large for us to bother with. A great outcome from a covid world so not really something to complain about. The sheer amount of children running around and screaming was a bit of a mood kill, but again not something to judge the Gaol on itself more just an FYI. It would be great to see more displays of relics or things from that time (given hangings were around until the 70s I'm sure more letters or other items would've been available to add to the stories and history.

This is apart of Melbourne history that needs to be visited, we totally enjoyed it with staff making the visit a better time. We were going to do ghost tour as there's more to Gaol than we can see due to the Hanging's in the past.

we went there to kill a bit of time.. a good piece of Melbourne history lots of interesting facts on people hanged at the goal ...POWs and guards. even hangmen ...and of course the most famous inmate Ned Kelly ...probably not on a young kids to do list but worth a look ... also a short walk to the state library where Ned Kelly's armour is held