Melbourne Museum

The Melbourne Museum in Carlton Gardens is the largest museum in the Southern Hemisphere, covering natural history, Indigenous culture, Australian social history, and science in a striking building designed by Denton Corker Marshall and opened in 2000. The Bunjilaka Aboriginal Cultural Centre is one of the most thoughtfully presented Indigenous Australian exhibitions anywhere in the country, co-curated with the communities whose stories it tells.

The museum's standout exhibits include the Forest Gallery — a living rainforest inside the building housing birds and insects — and the Melbourne Story gallery, which traces the city's development from the Kulin Nation through the gold rush to the present. The Royal Exhibition Building, a UNESCO World Heritage Site built for the 1880 Melbourne International Exhibition, stands directly alongside in the gardens and can be visited on guided tours.

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A story
The museum's most famous resident is Phar Lap, the racehorse who won the 1930 Melbourne Cup and 37 of his 51 starts before dying in mysterious circumstances in California in 1932. His taxidermied body is displayed in the museum alongside his preserved heart, which weighed 6.35 kilograms — nearly twice the average for a horse. Whether his death was poisoning or accidental remains genuinely disputed.