Culture

Main article: Culture of Melbourne La Trobe Reading Room in the State Library of Victoria Princess Theatre The stained glass ceiling of the Great Hall of the National Gallery of Victoria

Melbourne is an international cultural centre, with cultural endeavours spanning major events and festivals, drama, musicals, comedy, music, art, architecture, literature, film and television. Melbourne is the birthplace of Australian film and television, Australian rules football, the Heidelberg School of Australian Impressionism, Australian contemporary dance (including the Melbourne Shuffle and New Vogue styles), and is home to the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia's oldest and largest public art museum. In 2008, Melbourne became the second city after Edinburgh to be declared a UNESCO City of Literature. It has thrice shared top position in a survey by The Economist of the world's most liveable cities on the basis of a number of attributes which include its broad cultural offerings.

Festivals

The city celebrates a wide variety of annual cultural events and festivals of all types, including Australia's largest free community festival—Moomba, the Melbourne International Arts Festival, Melbourne International Film Festival, Melbourne International Comedy Festival and the Melbourne Fringe Festival.

Live performance

The Australian Ballet is based in Melbourne, as is the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Melbourne is the second home of Opera Australia after it merged with Victoria State Opera in 1996. The Victorian Opera had its inaugural season in 2006 and operates out of various venues in Melbourne.

Notable theatres and performance venues include the Victorian Arts Centre (which includes the State Theatre, Hamer Hall, the Playhouse and the Fairfax Studio), Melbourne Recital Centre, Sidney Myer Music Bowl, Princess Theatre, Regent Theatre, Forum Theatre, Palace Theatre, Comedy Theatre, Athenaeum Theatre, Her Majesty's Theatre, Capitol Theatre, Palais Theatre and the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.

Film

The city has an extensive cinematic history. Indeed, the world's first feature films were produced in Melbourne and its outer suburbs. Limelight Department's 1900 Soldiers of the Cross, the world's first religious epic, anticipated the early 1900s golden age of Melbourne film production—an era marked by the exploration of local history and Australia's emerging identity. The 1854 civil insurrection of Ballarat was brought to life on the screen in Eureka Stockade, and The Story of the Kelly Gang (the world's first feature length narrative film and precedent of the "Bushranging drama") followed the escapades of Ned Kelly and his gang of outlaws. Melbourne filmmakers continued to produce bushranger and convict films, such as 1907's Robbery Under Arms and 1908's For the Term of His Natural Life, up until 1912, when Victorian politicians banned the screening of bushranger films for what they perceived as the promotion of crime.

Melbourne's and Australia's film industries declined soon after and came to a virtual stop in the 1960s. A notable film shot and set in Melbourne during this lull is 1959's On the Beach. The 1970s saw a major renaissance of Australian film, giving rise to the Australian New Wave, as well as the Ocker and Ozploitation genres, instigated by Melbourne-based productions Stork and Alvin Purple respectively. Other 1970s Melbourne films, such as Picnic at Hanging Rock and Mad Max, would achieve worldwide acclaim. 2004 saw the construction of Melbourne's largest film and television studio complex, Docklands Studios Melbourne, which has hosted many domestic films and television shows, as well as international features Ghost Rider, Knowing, Charlotte's Web, Nightmares and Dreamscapes and Where the Wild Things Are, among others. Melbourne is also home to the headquarters of Village Roadshow Pictures, Australia's largest film production company. Famous modern day actors from Melbourne include Cate Blanchett, Rachel Griffiths, Olivia Newton-John, Guy Pearce and Eric Bana.

Street culture Melbourne is known for its extensive network of lively city laneways and arcades. (Pictured: Centre Place).

Melbourne has been placed alongside New York and Berlin as one of the world's great street art meccas, and its extensive street art-laden laneways, alleys and arcades were voted by Lonely Planet readers as Australia's top cultural attraction.

Architecture Further information: Architecture of Melbourne The South Melbourne Town Hall is of state heritage significance to Victoria being listed on the Victorian Heritage Register (H0217).

The city is recognised for its mix of modern architecture which intersects with an extensive range of nineteenth and early twentieth century buildings. Some of the most architecturally noteworthy historic buildings include the World Heritage Site-listed Royal Exhibition Building, constructed over a two-year period for the Melbourne International Exhibition in 1880, A.C. Goode House, a Gothic style building located in Collins Street designed by Wright, Reed & Beaver (1891), William Pitt's Venetian Gothic style Old Stock Exchange (1888), William Wardell's Gothic Bank (1883) which features some of Melbourne's finest interiors, the incomplete Parliament House, St Paul's Cathedral (1891) and Flinders Street Station (1909), the busiest commuter railway station in the world in the mid-1920s.

The city also features the Shrine of Remembrance which was built as a memorial to the men and women of Victoria who served in World War I and is now a memorial to all Australians who have served in war. The now demolished Queen Anne style APA Australian Building (1889), the world's 3rd tallest building at the time of completion, is said to have anticipated the skyscraper race in New York City and Chicago.

As of 2012, the city contains a total of 594 high-rise buildings, with 8 under construction, 71 planned and 39 at proposal stage making the city's skyline, the second largest in Australia. The CBD is dominated by modern office buildings including the Rialto Towers (1986), built on the site of several grand classical Victorian buildings, two of which—the Rialto Building (1889) designed by William Pitt and the Winfield Building (1890) designed by Charles DEbro & Richard Speight—still remain today and more recently hi-rise apartment buildings including Eureka Tower (2006), the 10th tallest residential building in the world.

Residential architecture is not defined by a single architectural style, but rather an eclectic mix of modern free-standing dwellings in the metropolitan area (particularly in areas of urban sprawl) which is perhaps the most common type of housing outside inner Melbourne, Victorian terrace housing, townhouses and historic Italianate, Tudor revival and Neo-Georgian mansions common in neighbourhoods such as Toorak.