The coffee capital of the world, hidden laneway cafes, and the city that made brunch a competitive sport
Melbourne is the city that most Australians will tell you they'd rather live in — more culturally serious than Sydney, with better coffee, better graffiti, better live music, and a chip on its shoulder about the rivalry that it channels into genuine civic excellence. The laneway culture defines the city: Hosier Lane (street art), Centre Place (espresso bars and French restaurants), Degraves Street (coffee and crepes) are not tourist constructions but the actual grain of the city, filled with locals who use them every day. Melbourne's coffee culture derives from the Italian and Greek immigrant…
Melbourne was founded in 1835 by settlers from Tasmania and formally established as a colonial town in 1837 — its name came from British Prime Minister Lord Melbourne. The 1851 Gold Rush transformed it almost overnight from a modest settlement to the wealthiest city in the southern hemisphere; the grand Victorian-era buildings of the CBD (Flinders Street Station, the State Library, the Royal Exhibition Building) were funded directly from goldfield revenues. By 1880, Melbourne was briefly the most populated city in the British Empire outside London. Federation of the Australian colonies in 190…