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The city’s most praiseworthy architecture is conveniently clustered where the Yarra River meets the CBD. Dominating the corner of Flinders and Swanston Streets, the heart of this area, is the imposing, futuristic Federation Square, a jumble of buildings that together make up a marvel of zinc, glass and sandstone. Fed Square, as locals affectionately refer to it, incorporates a modern open-air piazza where people congregate, eat, drink, socialize…and, of course, watch other people doing the same. Also housed there are two terrific galleries: the Ian Potter Centre (www.ngv.vic.gov.au/ngvaustralia), an adjunct of the more traditional National Gallery of Victoria dedicated to Australian art, and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI; www.acmi.net.au), a high-tech gallery devoted to cinema, computer graphics and digital art.

Opposite Federation Square is the venerable Victorian-era train station and social hub known as Flinders Street Station, a stately egg-yolk-yellow building and a beloved Melbourne icon. A block away, on the south bank of the Yarra, is the no-less-emblematic Arts Centre (www.theartscentre.net.au), whose needle-shaped spire lights up at night, like a skinny Eiffel Tower.

If you don’t have vertigo, visit the Eureka Skydeck on the 88th floor of Melbourne’s talest skyscraper.

All these sights are easy strolls from one another and as a group make a good starting point for forays into Melbourne at large.