For this first day of discovery of Sydney I decided to start with its most emblematic monument, the opera house, then to go around to discover some sites and museums nearby.
You will find at the bottom of the page all the articles related to this trip in Australia.
The Sydney Opera House
It is of course the image most associated with the city of Sydney: its opera house, whose unique architecture is known throughout the world and which is a Unesco World Heritage Site.
Its construction took 16 years, from 1957 to 1973, and it was inaugurated by Queen Elizabeth II. This unusual duration is mainly due to the technical challenges that had to be met for such an original architecture and to the fact that it was exclusively financed by the revenues of the national lottery and that the work could not go faster than the money arrived.
It will have cost 102 million Australian dollars instead of the 7 initially planned.
It would be a pity to be satisfied with admiring it from the outside when visits are organized (reservations more than advised). For my part, I was also given an excellent guide.
The Sydney Opera House is said to have one of the best acoustics in the world, if not the best. Its large concert hall with 2700 seats also contains the largest mechanical organ in the world.
It also has 4 other rooms with 400 to 1500 seats.
A last exceptional photo with an illumination in honor of Elisabeth 2 who had just passed away.
On your way out, you will only have to walk a few meters to reach the next site: Government House
Government House and Botanical Garden
Government House is the residence of the Governor of New South Wales. The neo-gothic building is a Unesco World Heritage Site
Unfortunately it can only be visited on weekends and, moreover, at the time of my visit, the preparations for the ceremonies in honor of Elizabeth II who had just passed away were causing additional constraints.
So it will be for another time, I will console myself by walking a little in the botanical garden that surrounds it.
10 minutes away is the Sydney Museum.
Sydney Museum
The Sydney Museum, which is free to enter, is a museum about the history of the city of Sydney.
Logically, the colonization and the complicated relations with the aborigines hold a significant place.
The visit ends with a section on the future of urbanization for a more sustainable future.
An interesting museum but one that should not be given more time than it deserves unless one is really passionate about the subject. At the limit and in the same genre I find its equivalent in Goteborg much richer and more instructive. That says it all…
A little more walking to reach The Rocks.
The Rocks
It is originally the place where the aborigines lived. It then became the center of the commercial harbor in the 1800’s with all that this entails in terms of reputation and more or less legal activities.
Since then everything has been renovated and the area is full of shops, bars and restaurants.
A very pleasant place to stroll at any time of the day or evening. You can also visit “The Rocks Discovery Museum” which is an archaeological museum tracing the history of this part of the city.
And that’s it for today, see you in the next article for the continuation.
Articles about this trip to Australia
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