Australia · Victoria
Melbourne
Australia's culture capital: laneway coffee and bars, world-class galleries, band rooms and a sporting calendar the city plans its year around.
Melbourne is Australia's culture capital, a flat grid city where the good things hide up staircases, behind unmarked doors and down bluestone laneways rather than announcing themselves on the skyline. Coffee, eating and live music are taken seriously here, and generations of migration have made dining out the city's main event. Trams knit the centre to a ring of inner suburbs, each with its own strip of bars, bookshops and terrace houses, and the sporting calendar gives the whole place a rhythm.
Suggested stay
3–5 days
Language
English
Currency
AUD
Timezone
AEST (UTC+10)
Why you'll love Melbourne
Coffee and eating the cafe culture that set the national standard, and migrant kitchens that make eating out the reason to come
The laneways bluestone alleys of street art, tiny bars and upstairs restaurants folded into the middle of the grid
Sport and stage a city that fills a vast stadium on winter afternoons and its theatres, galleries and band rooms all year
Neighbourhood life inner suburbs of terrace houses and tram lines, each with a shopping strip worth a whole afternoon
Best time to visit
Sep-May
Warm, Aus Open · 17-26° days
37.814° S, 144.963° E
UTC+10 · Australia/Melbourne
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Weather & when to go to Melbourne
Month by month: typical highs and lows, rainfall and rain days.
✓ Best Sep-May
Conditions Jan Warm, Aus Open · Mar Mild, F1 GP · Apr Autumn · May Cool autumn · Jun Cold winter · Jul Coldest · Aug Cold · Sep Spring starts · Oct Spring · Nov Warm spring
Cards tinted by verified verdict · big number = typical daily high, small = low · hover for conditions
When to avoid Melbourne
No genuinely bad season - June to August is cold, grey and wind-whipped off Bass Strait rather than dangerous, and the galleries, bars and dining rooms are built for exactly that weather. Whatever month you come, pack layers: the city really does run through several seasons in an afternoon.
Top things to do in Melbourne
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Melbourne Cricket Ground - a football crowd in full voice
culture arts 👍 PopularThe MCG is the city's cathedral: cricket over summer, Australian rules football from autumn to spring, and a roar from a six-figure crowd that no televised version prepares you for. Out of season the tour walks you through the changing rooms and the sports museum.
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Hosier Lane and the laneways - street art, bars and hidden staircases
culture arts ⭐ Highly recommendedHosier Lane is the postcard wall, repainted constantly, but the real find is the network around it: Degraves Street for breakfast, Centre Place for coffee, and doorways off Little Collins that open onto bars the size of a lounge room.
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Queen Victoria Market - the city's larder since the 1870s
food 👍 PopularSheds of fruit, seafood and deli counters where Melbourne has shopped for well over a century. Go early for the produce and the delicatessen hall, and expect a bratwurst queue and a hot jam doughnut van on the way out.
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National Gallery of Victoria - the water wall and the great hall ceiling
culture arts ⭐ Highly recommendedAustralia's oldest and busiest gallery runs across two sites: the international collection on St Kilda Road, with its glass water wall and stained-glass ceiling to lie under, and Australian art at the Ian Potter Centre on Federation Square.
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St Kilda - beachfront, pier penguins and Luna Park
nature wildlife 👍 PopularThe bayside suburb that gives the city its seaside afternoon: a long sandy beach, a wooden pier where little penguins come ashore at dusk on the breakwater, cake shops on Acland Street and a laughing-mouth entrance to an old amusement park.
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Royal Botanic Gardens and the Shrine of Remembrance
scenicLawns, lakes and one of the finest botanic collections in the country, ringed by the running track locals call the Tan. The war memorial on the rise above looks straight back up Swanston Street to the city.
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State Library Victoria - the domed La Trobe Reading Room
historySix storeys of radiating desks under a dome that was the largest of its kind when it opened. The galleries upstairs hold the city's founding documents and Ned Kelly's armour.
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Royal Exhibition Building and Melbourne Museum - Carlton Gardens
historyThe domed exhibition hall built for the great international exhibitions was the first building in Australia listed as World Heritage, and hosted the opening of the first federal parliament. The modern museum next door covers Victorian natural history, Aboriginal Victoria and a famous racehorse.
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Fitzroy and Collingwood - Brunswick and Gertrude streets
nightlife musicThe inner north's strips of vintage shops, bookstores, tattoo studios, wine bars and rooftops, best walked slowly from late afternoon into the evening. Smith Street runs between them with the best of the bar traffic.
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Live music - the band rooms of the inner north and the bay
nightlife musicMelbourne carries a serious claim as the country's live music city, with pub band rooms rather than arenas doing the work: the Corner in Richmond, the Tote in Collingwood, the Northcote Social Club and the Espy at the St Kilda end.
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Chinatown and the food streets - Little Bourke Street and beyond
foodOne of the oldest continuous Chinatowns in the western world sits inside the grid, and the wider city eats accordingly: Vietnamese on Victoria Street, Greek on Lonsdale, Italian on Lygon and the whole of the subcontinent along Sydney Road.
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Melbourne Skydeck - the grid from the top of Eureka Tower
scenicThe observation deck near the top of the Southbank tower takes in the grid, the bay and, on a clear day, the ranges. Best at sunset, when the tram lines start to glow through the streets below.
Best areas to stay in Melbourne
$ Budget $$ Mid-range $$$ Premium
CBD (the Hoddle Grid)
First-time visitors $$Laneway bars, theatres, trams at the door
Explore hotels in CBD (the Hoddle Grid) →
Fitzroy & Collingwood
Bars & creatives $$Terrace houses, bar strips, vintage and art
Explore hotels in Fitzroy & Collingwood →
Carlton
Leafy & central $$Leafy, studenty, Italian-Australian dining
Explore hotels in Carlton →
St Kilda
Beach & bars $$Bayside beach, faded glamour, sea air
Explore hotels in St Kilda →
South Yarra & Prahran
Shopping & style $$$Boutiques, riverside parks, polished nightlife
Explore hotels in South Yarra & Prahran →
Live nightly prices from Booking.com, Agoda and others, centred on Melbourne
Getting to & around Melbourne
Getting there
Fly into MEL at Tullamarine, then a coach or road transfer of roughly half an hour into the centre
Flight
Melbourne Airport (Tullamarine) (MEL)
About 23 km northwest of the centre, with no rail link: the SkyBus coach runs to Southern Cross Station in around half an hour off-peak, and taxis and rideshare take a similar time when the Tullamarine Freeway is clear, longer in peak traffic. Avalon, the second airport used by some domestic flights, sits much further southwest with its own coach connection.
Train
Southern Cross Station
The interstate service from Sydney and V/Line regional trains from across Victoria all terminate at Southern Cross, a short walk or tram ride from the grid
Coach
Southern Cross Station
Long-distance coaches from Adelaide, Canberra and Sydney use the coach terminal in the same building
Ferry
The Spirit of Tasmania crosses Bass Strait overnight from Devonport in Tasmania, carrying cars as well as foot passengers
Drive
The Hume Freeway runs down from Sydney and Canberra, the Western Highway across from Adelaide, and the Princes Highway along the coast in both directions
Getting around
Tram
The world's largest tram network fans out from the grid to the beach, the inner north and the eastern suburbs; slow but unbeatable for seeing the city
TBC
Free Tram Zone
Trams inside the central grid, Docklands and up to the Queen Victoria Market cost nothing, including the vintage City Circle tram that loops the edge of the grid
Free
Metro trains
Suburban lines converge on the underground City Loop between Flinders Street and Southern Cross, and reach the bay, the ranges and the outer suburbs
TBC
Bus
Fills in the cross-suburb trips the radial tram and train network misses
TBC
Walking
The grid is flat and compact, and the laneways only give themselves up on foot
Free
Taxi & rideshare
Widely available, though on a match night or in peak traffic the tram usually wins
TBC
Day trips from Melbourne
Great Ocean Road
1-2 daysCoast road & sea stacks
The country's great coastal drive: surf breaks at Bells Beach, koalas in the roadside gums, rainforest in the Otways and the limestone stacks of the Twelve Apostles. Doable in a very long day, far better over two.
Getting there
car | tour | bus
About 1.5 hr drive to Torquay, then the coast road west; day tours run from the city
Phillip Island
Full dayPenguins & wild coast
Little penguins waddle up the beach at dusk in the island's nightly parade, with fur seals off the Nobbies, koalas in the conservation reserve and a motor racing circuit on the way in.
Getting there
car | tour | bus
About 2 hr drive southeast, or a day tour from the city
Yarra Valley
Full dayWine region
Cool-climate chardonnay and pinot noir from cellar doors set among the hills, plus sparkling houses, a native wildlife sanctuary at Healesville and dawn balloon flights over the vines.
Getting there
car | tour
About 1 hr drive northeast, or a guided winery tour
Mornington Peninsula
Full dayBeaches & hot springs
Calm bay beaches on one side, wild ocean back beaches on the other, with cellar doors, geothermal bathing pools in the hills and a passenger ferry across the heads to Queenscliff.
Getting there
car | train | bus
1 to 1.5 hr drive southeast, or train to Frankston then bus
Dandenong Ranges
Half dayFern gullies & steam train
Mountain ash forest and tree-fern gullies half an hour past the suburbs, with the Puffing Billy steam railway running along the ridge and garden tearooms in the hill villages.
Getting there
train | car
About 1 hr by train to Belgrave, or the same by car
Ballarat and Sovereign Hill
Full dayGold rush history
The goldfields town that made Melbourne rich, with a recreated 1850s diggings township, mine tours, boulevards of gold-boom architecture and the site of the Eureka Stockade rebellion.
Getting there
train | car
About 1.5 hr by V/Line train or by car
A little history of Melbourne
The Kulin nations, among them the Wurundjeri and Boonwurrung, lived along the river they call the Birrarung for many thousands of years before John Batman and John Pascoe Fawkner's parties arrived from Van Diemen's Land in 1835 and staked out a settlement on it. The town was named after the serving British prime minister, laid out on Robert Hoddle's grid of wide streets, and then transformed by the gold discovered in central Victoria in 1851: within a decade the colony's population had multiplied and the diggings' wealth was being poured into banks, arcades, theatres and parks.
The boom peaked with the Marvellous Melbourne of the 1880s, collapsed in the crash of the 1890s, and left behind the grand streetscape the city still trades on. Melbourne served as the seat of federal parliament from Federation in 1901 until Canberra was ready, hosted the first Olympic Games in the southern hemisphere in 1956, and was remade again by postwar migration from Greece, Italy, Lebanon, Vietnam and later China and South Asia, which is why the eating is what it is.
Settler parties from Van Diemen's Land camp on the Birrarung, on Kulin nations country
The settlement is named Melbourne and surveyed as the Hoddle Grid
Victoria separates from New South Wales, and gold is found at Ballarat and Bendigo weeks later
The Royal Exhibition Building opens for the international exhibition at the height of Marvellous Melbourne
Australia federates and the first federal parliament opens in Melbourne, which serves as the seat of government until 1927
Melbourne hosts the Olympic Games, the first held in the southern hemisphere
The Royal Exhibition Building and Carlton Gardens become Australia's first built site on the World Heritage list
Know before you go
Payment
Cards everywhere
English
Everywhere
Wifi
Reliable
Power
Type I
230 V, 50 Hz
Dialing
+61
Mobile network & SIM card
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FAQs about Melbourne
▸ When is the best time to visit Melbourne?
September to May is the broad sweet spot. Autumn, roughly March to May, is the local favourite: mild, still and golden, with the sporting and arts calendar in full swing. Summer is warm and long-evening but can throw sudden hot spells, and spring is the least predictable stretch of all. Winter, June to August, is cold and grey rather than off-limits, and the city moves indoors happily.
▸ Is it true that Melbourne has four seasons in one day?
Yes, and it is not a joke made at the city's expense. Cold fronts sweep in off Bass Strait year-round, so a warm morning can turn windy, wet and ten degrees cooler by mid-afternoon. Locals carry a layer and a compact umbrella in every season.
▸ How many days do you need in Melbourne?
Three full days covers the laneways, the major galleries, a market and a couple of inner-suburb strips. Five lets you slow to the city's cafe pace, catch a game or a gig, and take a day trip to the coast or the wine country.
▸ Do I need a car in Melbourne?
Not in the city. Trams, trains and walking cover the centre and inner suburbs comfortably, and parking is scarce and expensive. Hire a car only for the day trips: the Great Ocean Road, the Yarra Valley and the peninsula are all far better with your own wheels.
▸ Melbourne or Sydney?
Sydney has the harbour and the beaches, and wins on scenery outright. Melbourne wins on the things you do rather than look at: eating, coffee, galleries, live music, bars and sport. If you like a city to reveal itself slowly, come here.
▸ Is Melbourne expensive?
It sits at the pricier end for a traveller, in line with other big Australian cities, with accommodation the biggest bite. It scales well though: market food, the free tram zone, free galleries and gardens, and the inner north's cheap-eat strips keep a day's spending reasonable.
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