Sydney's grandest sandstone lady, the old Department of Lands and Education building, spent a century as a place you visited for paperwork. Now Make Architects has restored her and BAR Studio has dressed the interiors, and the sixth floor holds one of the most beautiful spa spaces in the country. Auriga is amber light, warm timber and walls of greenery, with a steam room, sauna, experiential showers and an ice fountain to move between. The signature is Connect to Country, worked with heated stones gathered from across Australia with the permission of Elders. Or the two-hour Fluidform Rebalance, developed with Kirsten King. The skincare is Byron Bay's Synthesis Organics, all clean botanicals. You arrive frazzled by the city ten floors below. You leave recalibrated, and quietly smug about it.