The Mob Museum

The Mob Museum - formally the National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement - occupies a restored 1933 federal courthouse a five-minute walk north of Fremont Street. It isn't a themed attraction wearing a history costume: the second-floor courtroom is the actual room where the Kefauver Committee held its Las Vegas organized-crime hearing in 1950, and the galleries around it are built on real evidence, from murder weapons and wiretap rigs to case files from the agents who spent decades taking the syndicates apart.

Three exhibit floors run chronologically from the top down - Prohibition and the birth of the syndicates on 3, the Kefauver era and the Vegas casino skim on 2, present-day organized crime on 1 - and the basement holds The Underground, a speakeasy that distills its own moonshine on site. Two honest caveats: this is a reading-heavy museum, so a proper visit takes two to three hours, and the marquee interactives (the Crime Lab and the Firearm Training Simulator in the Use of Force exhibition) carry their own tickets on top of the $34.95 adult admission, which pushes the cost of a full visit well past the headline rate. If that stings, the core galleries alone still justify the trip Downtown.