New York City Criminal Courts Building

Looking at guidebooks, I discovered something a little bit strange ... you can attend public trials here, and watch if you want. They are located in Chinatown, near City Hall and the Brooklyn Bridge so it can be a good choice to kill time before crossing the bridge to see Manhattan at night from the other side. They start in the afternoon from 15:30, and can last until past 1 in the morning. When you enter, you can have a look at the police desk to see if the trials that day are interesting or not. In our case, they were not, and the vocabulary was very technical, so it was hard to follow. The cases were minor and went very fast; within an hour we saw about 5 or 6.