Join Melbourne tour guides Lucy & John as they reveal the best of the city’s stunning architecture. This online tour isn’t just fascinating, it’s interactive, asking you to take part as you chat with your hosts, view historic photos and take part in interactive polls.
It was the best of times, it was the…well, even bester of times. It’s hard to overstate how fabulously wealthy Melbourne was in the 1880s. By then, the city had enjoyed three decades of riches from the Victorian Gold Rush. As money started to pour in, so did people, and the city exploded in population from a minor British outpost to a city of hundreds of thousands.
Just like rich people for all of time, Melbourne wanted to flaunt its ridiculous wealth and flaunt it did. With buildings like the Princes Theatre, Victorian Parliament and the Royal Exhibition Centre, Melbourne flexed its financial muscles, erecting pristine examples of gold rush architecture to welcome government and culture, respectively.
The Victorian Parliament started as a colonial government that welcomed iconic figures such as Peter Lalor, the leader of the Eureka Rebellion who later became Speaker of the House. He would have visited at a time when the parliament looked markedly different though. When originally constructed, the building was divided onto either side of Bourke Street. Only later did they fill in the gap with the grand Victoria Hall which sits there today. The building was planned with a colossal dome on the top, but it was never completed due to the Land Crash of 1892. Had it been completed, it would have looked like our next building…
The Royal Exhibition Centre. This building was purpose-built for what we now have come to know as “The World’s Fair.” Built at a time when travel was long and arduous, the Royal Exhibition Centre both welcomed to the world, and played the part of the world as countries of the globe sent delegations to represent them, and fascinated Australians could put on their Sunday best and traipse from exhibit to exhibit as they travelled the world from Melbourne.
