littlebelgianinmelbourne – Little Belgian in Melbourne

We went to check out some of the beautiful buildings in Melbourne CBD on open houses day!

This weekend, some of Melbourne’s most magnificent buildings are open to the wider public and we went to have a sneak peek at at some of the buildings’s secret chambers.

Starting Saturday morning we planned on visiting only a few buildings since I expected long queues and big masses of people. Fortunately, this wasn’t the case.

We started at the Old Treasury Building. During the gold rush, this 19^th century building was used for storing gold in the underground vaults. The building is grotesque and represents the gold rush atmosphere very well.

Visiting the underground vaults you can find some information about the gold rush and the value of gold. On the first level, we visited the old offices of government officials.

Next to the old treasury building and the planned highlight of our visit is Parliament House. We had to wait half an hour in line, but it was worth it.

We got a fantastic tour with excellent explanations from our guide. Knowledgeable, topical and interesting. Learned some more about Australian state politics and pretended to be the parliaments president.

Fun fact: who knew that Melbourne was Australia’s capital in the early 1900’s. This parliament was the national parliament at that time before they moved the capital to Canberra.

The building itself is worth visiting with amazing decorations of gold, chandeliers, statues, domes, old furniture,…

After some delicious yum cha (Chinese brunch, where you can pick food from trolleys rolling around), we gave up on visiting old buildings and went shopping in the city. Not as cultural, but nevertheless a terrific day!