Explore Melbourne

St Paul's Cathedral is the Anglican cathedral of Melbourne, on the corner of Flinders and Swanston Streets opposite Flinders Street Station. It was designed by the English Gothic Revival architect William Butterfield and completed in 1891; its three spires were built to a different design between 1926 and 1932. The interior has banded stonework and stained glass.

State Library Victoria, founded in 1854 as the Melbourne Public Library, is Australia's oldest public library and fills a city block on Swanston Street. Its domed La Trobe Reading Room opened in 1913, and its galleries show items from a collection of over five million, including Ned Kelly's armour and the diaries of Melbourne's European founders.

Flinders Street Station is Melbourne's central railway station on the corner of Flinders and Swanston Streets, on a site used by trains since 1854. The present building, designed by the railway employees James Fawcett and H. P. C. Ashworth and completed in 1909, has a copper dome, a clock tower and a row of clocks above the main entrance showing the next departures.

The Immigration Museum occupies the restored Old Customs House on Flinders Street in central Melbourne. Opened by Museums Victoria in 1998, it tells the stories of people who have migrated to Victoria: their reasons for leaving, their journeys and arrival, and the communities and identities they built.

Federation Square is a public square and arts precinct opened in 2002 on the corner of Flinders and Swanston Streets, built over railway lines opposite Flinders Street Station. Its angular buildings clad in sandstone, zinc and glass house ACMI, the Ian Potter Centre of the National Gallery of Victoria and the Koorie Heritage Trust.

The Old Melbourne Gaol is a bluestone prison on Russell Street, begun in 1839 and in use until 1924. Some 133 people were hanged here, among them the bushranger Ned Kelly. Its three-storey cell block holds exhibits on prisoners and staff, including death masks, and visitors can also enter the neighbouring City Watch House.

Melbourne Skydeck is the observation deck on level 88 of Eureka Tower, a 297-metre residential skyscraper in Southbank completed in 2006. Its glass-walled floor looks out over the city, the Yarra River and Port Phillip Bay, and The Edge, a glass cube, extends three metres out from the building with visitors inside.

Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium stands on the north bank of the Yarra River beside the King Street Bridge. Opened in 2000 in a building designed to resemble a moored ship, it shows king and gentoo penguins, crocodiles, sharks and rays, with a 2.2-million-litre oceanarium at its centre that visitors walk around.

Queen Victoria Market is a market at the northern edge of Melbourne's city centre, built in stages from the 1860s, officially opened in 1878 and listed on the National Heritage List. Across about seven hectares of open-sided sheds and halls, its stalls sell fruit and vegetables, meat, fish, deli goods, clothing and general goods.

The National Gallery of Victoria, founded in 1861, is Australia's oldest public art museum. Its international collection fills NGV International on St Kilda Road, a bluestone building by Roy Grounds opened in 1968 with a water wall at the entrance; Australian art is shown at the Ian Potter Centre in Federation Square.

St Patrick's Cathedral is the Roman Catholic cathedral of Melbourne, in East Melbourne. Designed by William Wardell in Gothic Revival style and built of bluestone from 1858, it was consecrated in 1897 and its spires were completed in 1939. Pope Paul VI made it a minor basilica in 1974; inside are chapels around the sanctuary and stained-glass windows.

The Royal Exhibition Building in the Carlton Gardens was built in 1879–1880 to designs by Joseph Reed for the Melbourne International Exhibition. The first Parliament of Australia opened in its Great Hall in 1901, and in 2004 it became the first building in Australia on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Guided tours lead up to the dome promenade.

Melbourne Museum is the natural and cultural history museum of Museums Victoria, opened in 2000 in the Carlton Gardens beside the Royal Exhibition Building. Its galleries cover dinosaurs and other fossils, Victoria's animals, a living indoor forest, the history of Melbourne and the Bunjilaka Aboriginal Cultural Centre, and the complex includes an IMAX cinema.

Polly Woodside is a three-masted iron barque built in Belfast and launched in 1885, which rounded Cape Horn 16 times carrying coal and nitrate. Later used as a coal hulk in the Port of Melbourne, it was handed to the National Trust in 1968 and now lies restored in a dock at South Wharf, where visitors go aboard on its open days.

The Fox Classic Car Collection is a car museum opened in 1997 in the Queen's Warehouse, a heritage-listed building on Collins Street in Docklands, once a customs store and Australia's first stamp and banknote printing works. Its cars, gathered by the transport businessman Lindsay Fox, include Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar, Porsche and Ferrari models made between 1923 and 2024.

The Melbourne Cricket Ground in Yarra Park, East Melbourne, was established by the Melbourne Cricket Club in 1853 and holds about 100,000 spectators. It hosts AFL football, including the Grand Final, and the Boxing Day cricket Test, and was the main stadium of the 1956 Olympic Games. Guided tours visit the MCC Library, the players' change rooms and the boundary line.

The Australian Sports Museum, formerly the National Sports Museum, occupies part of the Olympic Stand at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, with its entrance at Gate 3. Its galleries cover Australian rules football, cricket and the Olympic Games, it houses the Sport Australia Hall of Fame, and the Game On gallery has interactive sports challenges.

The Shrine of Remembrance is Victoria's war memorial in Kings Domain on St Kilda Road, dedicated in 1934 to those who served in the First World War and now honouring all Australians who have served. Designed by the veterans Phillip Hudson and James Wardrop, the granite building holds the Stone of Remembrance in its sanctuary, with a crypt below.

Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne cover 38 hectares on the south bank of the Yarra River, on land reserved for a botanic garden in 1846. Lawns, lakes and garden beds hold about 50,000 plants of 8,500 species in themed living collections, among them a fern gully, a herb garden and a children's garden.

Melbourne Zoo opened in Royal Park, Parkville, about 4 km north of the city centre, in 1862. Around 250 species live in habitats grouped by region: gorillas in an African rainforest, orangutans and tigers in an Asian rainforest, and kangaroos, koalas and wombats in an Australian bush section, alongside a butterfly house and a reptile house.