Melbourne self-guided audio tour, on foot or by car

90 places · two walking routes and a 149 km driving route ready to load

Every place on the map

Each red dot is a place with its own story. The story starts by itself when you reach it — on foot, by bike or by car.

All 90 places in this guide

Here is every place the guide tells you about, with the first line of its story:

1. Manchester Unity Building — Manchester Unity Building is Melbourne's favourite Art Deco tower, and it went up at astonishing speed.
2. The Capitol — The Capitol is a cinema that feels like stepping inside a crystal.
3. Melbourne Town Hall — Melbourne Town Hall has been the city's front room since 1870, when Joseph Reed's grand design with its tall clock tower was completed.
4. Regent Theatre — The Regent Theatre is Melbourne's most lavish picture palace, and it has risen from the ashes more than once.
5. Athenaeum Theatre — The Athenaeum is the oldest cultural institution in Melbourne.
6. Cooks' Cottage — Cooks' Cottage is often called the oldest building in Australia, and yet it was built on the other side of the world.
7. Fitzroy Gardens — Fitzroy Gardens is Melbourne's most romantic park, named after Charles FitzRoy, an early governor of New South Wales.
8. St Patrick's Cathedral — St Patrick's Cathedral is the Catholic heart of Melbourne and one of the finest Gothic Revival churches in the world.
9. Her Majesty's Theatre — Her Majesty's Theatre has been the grand old lady of Exhibition Street since 1886.
10. Bourke Street Mall — Bourke Street Mall is Melbourne's main shopping street, a pedestrian block between Swanston and Elizabeth streets where the only traffic is the trams.
11. Melbourne's GPO — Melbourne's GPO, the old General Post Office, stands on the corner of Bourke and Elizabeth streets, and for well over a century this was where the city came to post letters, collect parcels and send telegrams.
12. Myer Melbourne — Myer Melbourne is the flagship of Australia's best-known department store, and its story begins with a penniless migrant.
13. Royal Arcade — The Royal Arcade is the oldest surviving shopping arcade in Australia.
14. The Block Arcade — The Block Arcade is Melbourne's most elegant shopping arcade, built in 1892 at the height of the land boom.
15. Sandridge Bridge — Sandridge Bridge carried trains long before it carried walkers.
16. Queensbridge Square — Queensbridge Square sits on the spot that explains why Melbourne is here at all.
17. Hamer Hall — Hamer Hall is Melbourne's great concert hall and the home of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.
18. Princes Bridge — Princes Bridge is Melbourne's grand gateway over the Yarra, linking Federation Square and Flinders Street Station with the arts precinct and St Kilda Road.
19. Government House — Government House is the official residence of the Governor of Victoria, and has been since 1876.
20. Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria — Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria begins here at Observatory Gate, next to the Shrine, and entry is free.
21. Shrine of Remembrance — Shrine of Remembrance is Victoria's memorial to all Australians who have served in war and peacekeeping.
22. National Gallery of Victoria — National Gallery of Victoria is the oldest public art gallery in Australia, founded in 1861, and this building on St Kilda Road is NGV International.
23. Crown Melbourne — Crown Melbourne is the vast entertainment complex stretching along the Southbank promenade: hotels, restaurants, shops, cinemas and the casino, all under one long roof, open on this site since 1997.
24. Polly Woodside — Polly Woodside is the tall ship resting in the old dry dock here at South Wharf, an iron-hulled barque built in Belfast in 1885.
25. South Wharf Promenade — South Wharf Promenade runs along the river past a row of old cargo sheds, left from the days when this stretch of the Yarra was a busy working port.
26. Arts Centre Melbourne — Arts Centre Melbourne is the spire at the top of St Kilda Road, 162 metres of steel lattice that lights up after dark.
27. Melbourne Skydeck, Eureka Tower — Melbourne Skydeck is at the top of Eureka Tower, the tall Southbank tower with the gold crown.
28. SEA LIFE Melbourne Aquarium — SEA LIFE Melbourne Aquarium sits on the riverbank beside the King Street bridge.
29. DFO South Wharf — DFO South Wharf is the outlet shopping centre of South Wharf, set in and beside the old cargo sheds of the port.
30. Marvel Stadium and Docklands — Marvel Stadium is the arena with the retractable roof, home ground for several Australian football clubs.
31. Victoria Police Museum — The Victoria Police Museum is at 313 Spencer Street. It holds the country's largest collection of Kelly Gang armour: the home-made suits of iron plate, beaten out of plough mouldboards, that Ned Kelly and his gang wore at their last stand…
32. Chinatown Melbourne — Chinatown is Little Bourke Street, between Swanston and Exhibition Streets.
33. Carlton Gardens — Carlton Gardens was laid out for the great exhibition of 1880, and these are Victorian gardens as they were meant to be: avenues of plane trees and elms leading to fountains, flower beds and ornamental lakes, all framing the Royal…
34. Royal Exhibition Building — The Royal Exhibition Building stands in Carlton Gardens. It was built for the Melbourne International Exhibition of 1880, when the city was rich on gold and wanted the world to know it.
35. Melbourne Museum and IMAX — Melbourne Museum and the IMAX cinema stand beside the Exhibition Building in Carlton Gardens.
36. Treasury Gardens — Treasury Gardens is the park behind the Old Treasury Building, a quiet green block between Spring Street and Fitzroy Gardens.
37. Bolte Bridge — Bolte Bridge is the one with the two tall grey towers, and it keeps a secret: those towers hold up nothing at all.
38. Albert Park Lake — Albert Park Lake is where Melbourne jogs, sails and walks the dog, and, for one week a year, races Formula 1 cars.
39. St Kilda Pier — St Kilda Pier reaches out into Port Phillip Bay, and at its end lives one of the best wildlife stories of any city: a colony of about 1,400 little penguins on the rock breakwater.
40. The Esplanade, St Kilda — The Esplanade in St Kilda runs along the top of the beach, and every Sunday it becomes one of Melbourne's oldest outdoor markets.
41. Luna Park Melbourne — Luna Park has been grinning at St Kilda since December 1912, and the grin is the entrance: you walk in through the wide-open mouth of Mr Moon, a giant face between two towers.
42. Acland Street — Acland Street is St Kilda's cake street. For generations its windows have been stacked with Central European cakes, cheesecakes, strudels, Black Forest cakes and vanilla slices, brought by the Jewish and other European migrants who settled…
43. Elwood Beach — Elwood Beach is St Kilda's quieter neighbour: the same bay, fewer crowds.
44. Brighton Bathing Boxes — Brighton Bathing Boxes are the row of little painted huts on Dendy Street Beach, one of the most photographed places in Melbourne.
45. Beach Road, Sandringham — Beach Road is Melbourne's classic coastal drive, following Port Phillip Bay through Brighton, Sandringham and Black Rock to Mordialloc.
46. Rippon Lea Estate — Rippon Lea Estate is a Victorian mansion in Elsternwick with one of the finest nineteenth-century gardens in Australia.
47. Prahran Market — Prahran Market has fed this part of Melbourne since 1864, making it one of the oldest markets in Australia.
48. Chapel Street — Chapel Street is Melbourne's long fashion and nightlife strip, running from South Yarra through Prahran to Windsor.
49. Como House & Garden — Como House is one of Melbourne's great colonial homes, a white Italianate mansion above the Yarra in South Yarra.
50. Abbotsford Convent — Abbotsford Convent sits in a bend of the Yarra: eleven heritage buildings and gardens, now one of Melbourne's biggest arts precincts.
51. Studley Park Boathouse — Studley Park Boathouse is the oldest public boathouse still working on the Yarra.
52. Villa Alba Museum — Villa Alba is a grand Italianate house on Walmer Street in Kew, near the Yarra and across from Studley Park, and inside it holds some of the finest painted interiors in Australia.
53. Heide Museum of Modern Art — Heide Museum of Modern Art began as a run-down dairy farm on the Yarra, bought in 1934 by John and Sunday Reed.
54. Yarra Boulevard, Kew — Yarra Boulevard in Kew is one of Melbourne's great scenic drives, winding along the high bank of the Yarra through bushland and above the golf courses.
55. Dights Falls — Dights Falls is a natural rock bar on the Yarra, just below the point where Merri Creek flows in.
56. Smith Street — Smith Street is the border between Fitzroy and Collingwood, and one of Melbourne's oldest suburban roads; in the 1840s it was the way out to Heidelberg.
57. Brunswick Street — Brunswick Street is the backbone of Fitzroy, Melbourne's first suburb, laid out in 1839.
58. The University of Melbourne — The University of Melbourne was founded in 1853, when the colony was rich with gold, and it is the second-oldest university in Australia, after Sydney.
59. Melbourne Zoo — Melbourne Zoo opened in Royal Park in October 1862, making it the oldest zoo in Australia.
60. Royal Park — Royal Park is the largest park in inner Melbourne, 170 hectares set aside in 1845, and it is deliberately kept wilder than the city's formal gardens, with open grassland and native trees.
61. Footscray Market — Footscray Market is the working market of Melbourne's west, and it tells the story of its suburb.
62. West Gate Bridge — West Gate Bridge lifts the freeway 58 metres above the Yarra and links the city with the western suburbs and Geelong.
63. Scienceworks — Scienceworks is Melbourne's hands-on science museum, built around a remarkable piece of Victorian engineering: the Spotswood Pumping Station.
64. Nelson Place, Williamstown — Nelson Place is the old heart of Williamstown, Melbourne's first seaport.
65. Point Gellibrand Coastal Heritage Park — Point Gellibrand is the rocky tip of Williamstown, and one of the places where Victoria began.
66. Werribee Park Mansion — Werribee Park Mansion is a sixty-room Italianate palace on the plains west of Melbourne, built between 1874 and 1877 for the Chirnside brothers, Thomas and Andrew, Scottish pastoralists who made a fortune from sheep.
67. Werribee Open Range Zoo — Werribee Open Range Zoo is Melbourne's African savannah, 225 hectares on the Werribee River, open since 1983.
68. Toorak — Toorak is Melbourne's most expensive suburb. A typical house here costs several million dollars, more than three times the Melbourne median, and in 2025 a mansion called Coonac sold for well over a hundred million, the most expensive home…
69. Flinders Street Station — Flinders Street Station, with its copper dome and the row of clocks over the entrance.
70. Banana Alley Vaults — Banana Alley Vaults are the row of brick arches under the railway viaduct, facing the river.
71. Immigration Museum — The Immigration Museum is housed in the Old Customs House. When the building was finished in 1876, the river wharves were right outside, and every ship's cargo, and every new arrival, passed through customs here.
72. Southern Cross Station — Southern Cross Station is the long, rolling roof a short walk up Spencer Street.
73. Flagstaff Gardens — Flagstaff Gardens is the green hill between La Trobe and William Streets.
74. Queen Victoria Market — Queen Victoria Market is about five minutes' walk north, up William or Elizabeth Street.
75. Melbourne Central and Coop's Shot Tower — Melbourne Central is the shopping centre on the corner of Swanston and La Trobe Streets, with an old brick tower inside it.
76. RMIT University — RMIT University spreads along Swanston Street. It began in 1887 as the Working Men's College, teaching trades at night to people who worked all day, and it is still a university of the city streets rather than a campus behind gates.
77. State Library Victoria — State Library Victoria is the domed building with the lawn out front on Swanston Street.
78. Old Melbourne Gaol — The Old Melbourne Gaol is the bluestone walls on Russell Street.
79. The Hotel Windsor — The Hotel Windsor faces Parliament across Spring Street. Opened in 1883, it is one of the last grand hotels of the Victorian age still in business in Australia.
80. Old Treasury Building — The Old Treasury Building stands at the top of Collins Street.
81. Princess Theatre — The Princess Theatre is the ornate front on Spring Street. It opened in its present form in 1886, and it has a ghost.
82. Parliament House of Victoria — Parliament House of Victoria is the columns and the great flight of steps at the top of Bourke Street.
83. Forum Theatre — The Forum Theatre is the Moorish towers and domes on the corner of Flinders and Russell Streets.
84. The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia — The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, on Federation Square, is the part of the National Gallery of Victoria devoted to Australian art.
85. Hosier Lane — Hosier Lane is the cobbled laneway covered wall to wall in street art.
86. Federation Square — Federation Square is the city's public square, opened in 2002 on the corner of Flinders and Swanston Streets.
87. ACMI, Australian Centre for the Moving Image — ACMI, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, on Federation Square, is Australia's museum of film, television and videogames.
88. St Paul's Cathedral — St Paul's Cathedral is the Gothic spires on the corner of Flinders and Swanston Streets.
89. Young and Jackson Hotel — The Young and Jackson Hotel faces Flinders Street Station across the intersection.
90. Melbourne Star Observation Wheel — The Melbourne Star Observation Wheel stands 120 metres tall in Docklands.

Other guides

By Andrew Sorokin, Sydney guide since 2006.