Canberra audiotours

Canberra was invented to resolve a rivalry. When the Australian colonies federated in 1901, Sydney and Melbourne could not agree on which city should become the capital, so a compromise site was chosen in the grazing land between them, and American architects Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin won the international design competition in 1912. Their plan organized the city around three axes meeting at a central basin, with streets radiating outward in wheel-and-spoke patterns aligned to natural landmarks. Walking Canberra today you can still feel the geometry, particularly around Lake Burley Griffin, the artificial body of water that was completed in 1964 and forms the visual heart of the city.

The national institutions gathered here, because that is where national institutions were required to go, have made Canberra something unexpected: genuinely one of the best places in Australia to spend a day in museums and galleries.

The National Gallery of Australia holds the largest collection in the country. The Australian War Memorial, a domed building at the foot of Mount Ainslie overlooking ANZAC Parade, combines museum, memorial, and archive in a way that manages to be both moving and informative. Parliament House, opened in 1988 and built into the hillside of Capital Hill so that its grass roof appears continuous with the surrounding landscape, is architecturally confident in a way that political buildings rarely manage.