The Carlton Gardens are 26 hectares of formal Victorian parkland on the north-eastern edge of the CBD, surrounding the Royal Exhibition Building and the Melbourne Museum. The layout — designed in the 1850s and refined for the 1880 International Exhibition — has long tree-lined avenues, two ornamental lakes, two pavilion-style fountains (the Hochgürtel Fountain in front of the Exhibition Building is the more elaborate), and a tessellated parterre garden of low hedges and seasonal beds.
The gardens are part of the UNESCO World Heritage listing that includes the Exhibition Building itself — one of the rare cases where the surrounding landscape was recognised as integral to a building's heritage value. They are open 24 hours and free to enter. A pleasant place to recover from a long lunch on Lygon Street.