Melbourne
Australia's cultural capital on Port Phillip Bay
Famed for its laneway cafes, street art, and obsessive devotion to sport and the arts, Melbourne is Australia's self-styled cultural capital and its second-largest city. Spread around the broad sweep of Port Phillip Bay, the metropolis of more than five million people prizes its Victorian architecture, leafy boulevards, rattling trams, and a coffee culture said to rival any in the world. Repeatedly ranked among the planet's most livable cities, Melbourne combines a cool, changeable climate with a relentless calendar of festivals, sporting finals, and live music.
The city sits at the head of Port Phillip Bay, a large, nearly enclosed inlet on Australia's southern coast, where the Yarra River winds down to the sea through the city centre. The surrounding terrain is mostly flat to gently rolling, and the metropolis sprawls widely across the plains and into the Dandenong Ranges to the east. Melbourne is notorious for its volatile weather, capable of swinging through four seasons in a single day as cold fronts sweep up from the Southern Ocean.
Free settlers founded Melbourne in 1835 on the lands of the Kulin nations, and the city exploded into wealth during the Victorian gold rush of the 1850s, when it briefly became one of the richest cities on earth. That boom built its grand public buildings, parks, and the country's first stock exchange. Melbourne served as Australia's temporary national capital until Canberra was ready, and it remains the heartland of Australian rules football, hosting the Australian Open tennis and the Melbourne Cup horse race.