On a hill overlooking the inner city, this is Jo’burg’s answer to Cape Town’s popular Robben Island attraction, but is a living tribute to the country’s fundamental freedoms and human rights, housing South Africa’s architecturally provocative Constitutional Court, where you can view artworks or — in the spirit of transparency — even attend court hearings. Like Robben Island, this is the site of a prison — the notorious 19th-century Old Fort, where brutalities of the worst kind were issued forth on innocents in the name of apartheid; both Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi were detained here.
A guided tour includes Number Four, the scene of much human torture and now replaced by an exhibition that attempts to unearth the notion of criminality. A work in progress, involving some of the city’s best architects, Constitution Hill centers on Constitution Square, a central piazza, where you’ll find two stairwells that belonged to the original “Awaiting Trial Block” of the prison; a wall here is filled with a range of comments made by South Africans as the country attained freedom.