The Parliament of Victoria dominates the top of Spring Street with a massive neoclassical colonnade and a broad staircase that reaches out toward the city grid. Construction of this seat of state government began on Boxing Day in eighteen…
Parliament and Fitzroy Gardens
This walk leads you past Melbourne's grandest gold-era civic landmarks into the tranquil lawns and historical curiosities of Fitzroy and Treasury Gardens.
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1. Parliament of Victoria
2. Old Treasury Building
The Old Treasury Building is defined by its grand Renaissance Revival facade, featuring a rhythmic series of classical columns and a horizontal, palazzo-style design. Constructed between eighteen fifty-eight and eighteen sixty-two, it sits…
3. Treasury Gardens
Treasury Gardens is defined by its long, diagonal avenues of mature trees that meet overhead to form a cathedral-like tunnel of shade. Set aside as a public reserve in eighteen fifty-one on land deemed too swampy for building, this site is…
4. The Conservatory
The Conservatory stands out in the Fitzroy Gardens for its distinctive Spanish Mission architectural style, a departure from the surrounding greenery. Opened on March thirteen, nineteen thirty, the building measures thirty by fifteen…
5. Cooks' Cottage
Cooks' Cottage is a two-story stone structure with an English-style garden, located in Fitzroy Gardens. Its walls bear a lintel inscribed with the date seventeen fifty-five and the initials of James and Grace Cook, the parents of the…
6. Scarred Tree
The Scarred Tree in Yarra Park is a mature river red gum that bears a distinct, regular-shaped wound on its trunk. This feature is not a result of natural decay or disease, but rather a deliberate modification made by the Kulin Nation…
7. Model Tudor Village
The Model Tudor Village in Fitzroy Gardens consists of a collection of miniature cement buildings that replicate a typical Kentish village from the sixteenth century. You can identify the site by its small-scale thatched cottages, a…
8. The Fairies Tree
The Fairies Tree is a gnarly, three-hundred-year-old river red gum stump, transformed by carvings of gnomes, fairies, and Australian animals into a miniature world. It sits today on a concrete base within the Fitzroy Gardens, protected by…
9. St. Patrick's Cathedral
St. Patrick’s Cathedral is a towering structure of bluestone and sandstone that dominates the local skyline with three spires reaching one hundred and five meters into the air. This landmark in East Melbourne stands as the largest church…