The Art Gallery of New South Wales began life in 1871 as the New South Wales Academy of Art, holding exhibitions and buying its first works a few years later to support living colonial artists. Its first permanent home, opened in 1880, was a freestanding gallery built for the Sydney International Exhibition; the grand sandstone building that fronts the Domain today, with its classical portico and the names of European masters carved across the facade, was completed in stages from the 1890s. That.....

The Australian National Maritime Museum sets out to tell the story of a nation shaped by the sea, from the seafaring traditions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to convict transportation, immigration, naval history, trade and surf culture. Opened on the western side of Darling Harbour in November 1991, its sail-like building was designed by the architect Philip Cox and sits right on the water, blurring the line between the galleries inside and the working fleet moored alongside. .....

Stencilled rats, riot police clutching smiley-face balloons and a girl reaching for a heart drifting out of frame are among the images that have made the anonymous British artist Banksy a household name, and Banksy Limitless gathers hundreds of them into a single immersive show. Staged at 155 George Street in the historic Rocks district, the exhibition arrived in Sydney in 2026 after a long London season, presenting reproductions, certified works, sculptures, large-scale murals and digital insta.....

Built to mark Australia's 1988 Bicentenary, the Chinese Garden of Friendship is a walled classical garden at the southern end of Darling Harbour, created as a gift of friendship between the state of New South Wales and its sister province of Guangdong. Designed by landscape architects from Guangzhou and modelled on the private scholar gardens of imperial China, it was the first garden of its kind in the southern hemisphere when it opened in January 1988, and it remains a rare and carefully maint.....

The largest island in Sydney Harbour has worn many guises, and Cockatoo Island, known to its traditional owners as Wareamah, carries the layered scars of all of them. From the 1830s it held a convict prison whose inmates quarried the sandstone and dug grain silos by hand; later it became a reformatory and industrial school for girls; and for much of the twentieth century it was one of Australia's most important shipyards, building and repairing naval vessels through two world wars. That unusual .....

On the western edge of Sydney's city centre, Darling Harbour has been transformed from a working port into one of the city's busiest leisure and entertainment precincts. Through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the bay was a tangle of wharves, railway yards, warehouses and goods sheds handling much of Sydney's cargo; as shipping moved on, the area fell derelict, until a major redevelopment for the 1988 Bicentenary reinvented it as a public waterfront of promenades, parks and attracti.....

Locked in a themed room with sixty minutes on the clock, players have to hunt for clues, crack codes and solve a chain of puzzles to escape; Escape Hunt Sydney runs exactly that format from a venue on George Street in the heart of the city. Part of an international escape-room brand, it offers several different rooms, each with its own story and set design, from period mysteries to more contemporary adventures, and teams typically range from two players to larger groups who split the puzzles bet.....

Madame Tussauds Sydney brings the world's famous faces within arm's reach, displaying lifelike wax figures of actors, musicians, athletes, world leaders and historical icons that visitors are encouraged to pose beside and touch. Opened in 2012 on Aquarium Wharf at Darling Harbour, it was the thirteenth Madame Tussauds to open worldwide and remains the only one in Australia, part of the global Merlin Entertainments group that traces its craft back to the eighteenth-century modeller Marie Tussaud......

In the heart of Sydney's central business district, Martin Place is a broad pedestrian plaza that runs for several blocks between George and Macquarie Streets, flanked by grand banking halls, the General Post Office and the towers of the financial sector. Originally a narrow street, it was progressively widened and finally closed to most traffic to create a public space that functions as the civic and commercial centre of the city. The plaza is home to the Cenotaph, a war memorial where Anzac D.....

Spinning through 270-degree turns and power-braking to a sudden stop, Oz Jet Boating offers a high-speed thrill ride on the waters of Sydney Harbour rather than a sightseeing cruise. Boats depart from the Eastern Pontoon at Circular Quay, putting passengers within sight of the Opera House and Harbour Bridge before the driver opens the throttle and begins a sequence of spins, slides and fishtails. The rides typically last around half an hour and combine genuine harbour scenery with the kind of m.....