Darlinghurst sits immediately east of the CBD on a low ridge between Hyde Park and Paddington, the most concentrated nightlife strip in Sydney and the historic heart of the city's gay community. Oxford Street runs through it like a spine, and for forty years it has been Sydney's parade route — most famously for the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, which fills the street with several hundred thousand spectators every March. By day Oxford Street is a mix of cafés, vintage shops, bookshops and bars; by night the bars take over.
The streets to the north and south of Oxford Street are residential, a fine grain of Victorian terraces with iron lacework verandahs, narrow alleys and small parks. Crown Street to the south crosses into Surry Hills, blurring the boundary between the two districts. Stanley Street, a short east-west run between Yurong and Riley, is Sydney's small Italian quarter — a handful of trattorias and espresso bars that have outlasted every neighbourhood trend.
The Sydney Jewish Museum on Darlinghurst Road is a serious Holocaust museum with first-person testimony. The Brett Whiteley Studio, just over the line in Surry Hills, preserves the working space of one of Australia's most celebrated painters. The neighbourhood is at its best in the evening — start with dinner on Crown Street and walk Oxford east toward Paddington for the bars.