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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

Scienceworks is a science and technology museum in Spotswood, in Melbourne's inner west, run by Museums Victoria since it opened in 1992. Hands-on galleries, demonstrations and the Melbourne Planetarium sit in an industrial-style building beside the Spotswood Pumping Station of 1897, whose steam engines are part of the visit.

Rippon Lea Estate in Elsternwick, south-east of central Melbourne, is a mansion built from 1868 for the businessman and politician Sir Frederick Sargood to designs by the architect Joseph Reed. The National Trust looks after the house and about 14 acres of 19th-century pleasure gardens; visitors walk the gardens and see the mansion's rooms on guided tours.