Sydney
Australia's largest city, wrapped around a glittering harbour
Built around one of the world's great natural harbours, Sydney is Australia's oldest and largest city, a sun-soaked metropolis of beaches, bays, and bold architecture. The white sails of its Opera House and the steel arch of the Harbour Bridge frame a deep-blue waterway threaded with ferries, yachts, and surf beaches. Home to more than five million people, the city blends a relaxed outdoor culture with the energy of a global financial centre, drawing migrants from across Asia, Europe, and the Pacific to its glittering, expensive shores.
Sydney spreads around Port Jackson, a drowned river valley whose maze of inlets, headlands, and coves gives the city more than 70 surf and harbour beaches, from world-famous Bondi to quiet bushland bays. The Tasman Sea borders it to the east, while the metropolis sprawls west across a coastal plain toward the foothills of the Blue Mountains. Sandstone cliffs and pockets of national park push into the suburbs, and a temperate climate of warm summers and mild winters underpins the harbourside lifestyle the city is famous for.
The British established a penal colony here in 1788, the first European settlement in Australia, on the lands of the Eora people who had lived around the harbour for tens of thousands of years. From those convict beginnings Sydney grew through gold rushes and immigration into the nation's commercial capital. It hosted a triumphant Olympic Games in 2000 and remains Australia's financial powerhouse, its skyline of towers rising behind the harbour that has defined the city's identity from its very first day.