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WHY MELBOURNE?
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Melbourne is one of the most liveable cities in the world
Currently, Melbourne is currently the second-most liveable city in the world and the most liveable in Australia! There are a few reasons why Melbourne is considered such a great place to live: there are multiple public transport options, relatively low crime rates, and plenty of jobs.
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Melbourne is home to world-class research facilities
As a creative city home to world-class academics and an exciting entrepreneurial spirit, if you study in Melbourne you’ll soon be thinking outside the box
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Melbourne’s laneway culture is rich, vivid and exciting.
Melbourne’s winding alleyways are magical; they’ll probably make you feel as though you’ve stepped into a real-life Wonderland. The city is well-known across Australia for its vibrant laneway culture, which is brimming with bustling shopping arcades, wandering musicians, live music, quiet street-side book cafes… and the occasional secret street party!
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It’s Australia’s cultural capital
Melbourne’s eccentricity, creativity and love of the arts is universally famous.
If you want to absorb some of Melbourne’s culture, check out the National Gallery of Victoria, the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. Plus, the city is home to more underground art movements, such as zine fairs (look out for Festival of the Photocopier), artist collectives, record stores, swing dancing clubs… the list goes on.
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It’s ‘Australia’s best student city’
Melbourne’s been regularly named Australia’s ‘best student city’ for local and international students – it’s the third-best student city in the world! This means that Melbourne excels in affordability, employer activity, desirability and student view. Here is proof.
Things to Do in Melbourne
Melbourne is a hip, dynamic metropolis, with an exciting city centre, inner-city neighborhoods that are full of unique character, and lush green parks and mountain ranges where you can enjoy Australian nature at its finest.
The city is known for its many laneways, its cultural diversity, excellent dining options for all budgets, and amazing street art. It’s also known for being the coffee capital of the world, and for being regularly voted as the world’s most livable city!
It’s official: you’ll find the world’s best coffee in Melbourne, as voted by over a thousand users on website booking.com.
Get a cup of coffee in Melbourne
Melbourne beat out many of the world’s most renowned coffee cities, such as Rome and Vienna, for the title; you’ll certainly know why once you see how committed Melbourne baristas are to their craft.
It’s actually hard to find a bad cup of coffee in Melbourne: the city touts itself as a world leader in coffee and café culture, and the inhabitants are proud to be coffee snobs! Cafes in London even advertise that they have Melbourne baristas, as Australian and New Zealander baristas essentially brought high-quality coffee to the city.
Melbourne even plays host to a coffee expo, and the 2014 world barista champion Pete Licata (from the USA) has described coffee culture in Melbourne as “incredible”. If you’re a coffee lover, you’ve come to the right place!
You’ll find great coffee just wandering through the laneways of the city, and there are actually tailored tours available to coffee aficionados: check out Hidden Secret Tours or Melbourne Coffee Tours for details.
The National Gallery- Heading up St Kilda Road, you will come across a monumental bluestone building on your left. Designed by Sir Roy Grounds, the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) has a collection of more than 73,000 works of art. Make your way through the arched entrance, behind the wall of water and towards the Great Hall to see the world’s largest stained-glass ceiling, which casts a kaleidoscope of colours onto the gallery floor. Aside from its permanent collection, NGV also holds exhibitions and special events such as the annual Melbourne Winter Masterpieces series.
The National Gallery of Victoria
Heading up St Kilda Road, you will come across a monumental bluestone building on your left. Designed by Sir Roy Grounds, the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) has a collection of more than 73,000 works of art. Make your way through the arched entrance, behind the wall of water and towards the Great Hall to see the world’s largest stained-glass ceiling, which casts a kaleidoscope of colours onto the gallery floor. Aside from its permanent collection, NGV also holds exhibitions and special events such as the annual Melbourne Winter Masterpieces series.
The Royal Botanic Gardens
From the air, these stunning, 38-hectare gardens suggest a set of giant green lungs in the middle of the city. Drawing over two million visitors annually, it's considered one of the finest examples of Victorian-era landscaping in the world. Here you'll find global plantings and a range of Australian flora. Mini ecosystems, a herb garden and an indigenous rainforest are set amid vast, picnic-friendly lawns and black-swan-spotted ponds. Be sure to book the Aboriginal Heritage Walk.
In summer the gardens play host to Moonlight Cinema and theatre performances. Other features include the 19th-century Melbourne Observatory for tours of the night sky, and the excellent, nature-based Ian Potter Foundation Children’s Garden, a whimsical, child-scaled place that invites kids and their parents to explore, discover and imagine.
The visitor centre is the departure point for tours, some of which are free and all of which should be booked by calling ahead (see the website for details). Close by, the National Herbarium, established in 1853, contains more than a million dried botanical specimens used for plant-identification purposes.