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"Paul Keating, prime minister of Australia in the early 1990s, once quipped, &amp;quot;If you&amp;#039;re not living in Sydney, you&amp;#039;re just camping out.&amp;quot; That boast surely raised the hackles of the nearly four million inhabitants of Melbourne, further stoking a long-running urban rivalry. Of course Sydney has beaches packed with beautiful people and a breathtaking harborside opera house. But Melbourne\u2014once the second-largest city in the British Empire, Australia&amp;#039;s first capital, and now capital of the state of Victoria\u2014has more than a few major jewels in its crown. The Commonwealth&amp;#039;s top theaters, museums, concert halls, and prestigious sporting events provide plenty of buzz, most prominently Melbourne Cup Day, where thoroughbred racing and designer d\u00E9colletage meet, and the Australian Open tennis tournament. Plus, hallowed universities draw one of the world&amp;#039;s largest international student populations.  Sydney might be the sexy mistress, but Melbourne is the grande dame. Says Aussie-born, New York\u2013based lighting designer Nathan Orsman, &amp;quot;Melbourne is different from Sydney. It feels more cultured.&amp;quot; Local public-relations queen Sonia Rendigs agrees, joking, &amp;quot;Melburnians think Sydneysiders are just interested in celebrities and tans.&amp;quot; That being said, more than a few international stars were born or reared in this Down Under metropolis on Australia&amp;#039;s southeastern flank. Actors Cate Blanchett, Eric Bana, and Portia de Rossi have roots here. So do pop sirens Kylie Minogue and Olivia Newton-John, comedian Barry Humphries and his alter ego, Dame Edna Everage, feminist writer Germaine Greer, and media mogul Rupert Murdoch.  Back in the early 19th century, however, Melbourne was a barren backwater in a vast land best known as the end of the line for British convicts. In 1835, free settlers from what is now the isle of Tasmania sailed to the mainland colony of New South Wales and established a settlement where the Yarra River meets Port Phillip Bay. Two years later it was dubbed Melbourne, in honor of Great Britain&amp;#039;s prime minister at the time. Hired to bring order to the wilderness, surveyor Robert Hoddle soon laid out a tidy urban grid, leaving room for leafy parks such as Fitzroy Gardens and King&amp;#039;s Domain (and the adjoining Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne) amid tree-lined avenues. When Port Phillip District declared itself the independent colony of Victoria on July 1, 1851, Melbourne became its capital\u2014one day before the discovery of gold near Ballarat, some 70 miles northwest, sparked an economic frenzy. The gold rush brought a flood of fortune hunters from around the world, fueling a building boom. Grandiose Victorian structures began altering the cityscape\u2014Parliament House, the Old Treasury Building, and the General Post Office among them. Fancy shopping destinations like the Block arcade aped the covered promenades of London and Milan. Up went majestic St. Paul&amp;#039;s and St. Patrick&amp;#039;s cathedrals, followed by copper-domed Flinders Street Station, once the world&amp;#039;s busiest railway terminus. That palatial 1910 hulk of stone and brick is also where Melburnians rendezvous when anyone says, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ll meet you under the clocks&amp;quot; (there&amp;#039;s a row of them above the main entrance). Given this kind of imperial architectural splendor, it&amp;#039;s no wonder a visiting English journalist dubbed the place &amp;quot;marvelous Melbourne.&amp;quot; When the six crown colonies\u2014Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, and Tasmania\u2014coalesced into the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901, Melbourne served as the new country&amp;#039;s capital (in 1927 it was changed to Canberra). The Royal Exhibition Building, a relic of the 1880 International Exhibition, is where the first federal parliament convened in 1901. Today it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the opulent centerpiece of Carlton Gardens, a park filled with cyclists and straw-hatted schoolchildren visiting the Melbourne Museum.  With hundreds of thousands of immigrants, the city is Australia&amp;#039;s most cosmopolitan spot. Cobblestoned alleys are crowded with Italian espresso bars. Lonsdale Street, epicenter of the largest Greek-speaking population beyond the Aegean Sea, is lined with souvlaki stands, tavernas playing bouzouki music, and baklava bakeries. Turks, Chinese, Vietnamese, Cambodians, and folks from more than 140 other countries round out the mix, including John So, a Hong Kong native who stepped down in November as Lord Mayor of Melbourne.  For all its ethnic diversity, Melbourne remains British in its character. &amp;quot;It is very English, very Victorian,&amp;quot; says Manhattan decorator and event designer Antony Todd of his cricket-mad hometown. &amp;quot;Melbourne&amp;#039;s a bit snobbish: &amp;#039;Who&amp;#039;s your dad? What school did you go to? Where do you live?&amp;#039; But it also has a wonderful gentility and old-world character I love.&amp;quot; The fine manners, however, are balanced by the defiance of convention that makes Aussies, well, Aussies. If the crowds at the Regent Theatre during last year&amp;#039;s run of the musical Priscilla Queen of the Desert are any indication, locals don&amp;#039;t think twice about taking the kids to see singing drag queens.  Rhinestones and strategic padding aside, traditional events still make up the social backbone. The grandest is the Spring Racing Carnival, a 50-day extravaganza of thoroughbred prowess spanning every October and November. Drawing thousands of spectators to Flemington Racecourse, the revelry culminates on the first Tuesday of November with the Melbourne Cup race, launched in 1861. An official public holiday since 1877, Melbourne Cup Day is thrilling, as much for the impressive horseflesh hurtling down the track as for the parade of women in haute couture, some of whom take home blue ribbons too (celebrity judges of the best-dressed contests have included Paris Hilton, Eva Longoria Parker, and Carson Kressley). &amp;quot;Nowhere in the world have I encountered a festival of people that has such a magnificent appeal to the whole nation,&amp;quot; observed Mark Twain in 1895, when he stopped by on a lecture tour. Many frocks spotted on Cup Day hail from Le Louvre, a legendary Collins Street boutique founded by fashion designer Lillian Wightman in 1922 and now run by her daughter, Georgina Weir. Behind the elegant fa\u00E7ade and silk-draped windows are three floors of posh dresses that have tempted everyone from stars of yesteryear (Oscar-winner Vivien Leigh and Melbourne-born soprano Dame Nellie Melba) to today&amp;#039;s top talents (Cate Blanchett and Nicole Kidman). So influential is Le Louvre that the eastern part of the street, arguably the city&amp;#039;s toniest commercial stretch, has been known as &amp;quot;the Paris end&amp;quot; since the shop opened. The f\u00EAte set loves talking about how Wightman, who died in 1993 at 90, managed the salon from the comfort of a leopard-skin chaise longue while sipping a glass of Champagne. Marvels Antony Todd, &amp;quot;It was like going to see Coco Chanel.&amp;quot; Similarly delectable fashion boutiques populate central Melbourne. Marais, an eclectic jewel in the Royal Arcade, carries Yves Saint Laurent, Balenciaga, and Hussein Chalayan. Assin on Little Collins Street imports Rick Owens and Ann Demeulemeester. Bright young things seeking something bold and slinky head to Jasongrech, the Howey Place shop of cutting-edge designers Jason Grech and Harry Georgiou. Melbourne dines as well as it dresses. Surrounded by wine regions like Yarra Valley and Mornington Peninsula, it is blessed with a culinary culture that prizes organic produce, artisanal cheeses, and other farm-raised treats, many sold at stalls in the vast Queen Victoria Market. Sydneysiders revere their &amp;quot;mod Oz&amp;quot; fusion fare, but Melburnians prefer classical European dishes. Some iconic restaurants are old-fashioned Italian spots such as Grossi Florentino, founded in 1928 and frequented by politicians, journalists, and actors. The flagship location of Brunetti pasticceria and restaurant has been a destination for decades, thanks to its spaghetti alla marinara and profiteroles. And for a casual lunch, don&amp;#039;t miss Pellegrini&amp;#039;s Espresso Bar, where a no-nonsense 1950s-diner interior meets heaping plates of pasta. Innovative ethnic fare, however, is creeping onto menus. Young chef George Calombaris, for example, produces a notably sophisticated take on Greek cuisine\u2014yogurt-braised neck of lamb, Black Forest panna cotta with vyssino sorbet\u2014at his all-the-rage restaurant, the Press Club, housed in a onetime headquarters of Rupert Murdoch&amp;#039;s newspaper empire. Civic leaders are getting creative too. June of 2007 saw the release of Future Melbourne, an aggressive plan to make this one of the world&amp;#039;s most sustainable cities over the next decade. Which means eco-friendly initiatives such as limiting the number of automobiles in the Central Business District (now called the Central Activities District by some jargon-happy planners), building cycling paths, creating a citywide bike-rental system, and operating public transport 24/7. These improvements are being launched just in time for a population boom predicted to make Melbourne (once again) the largest city in Australia within 20 years. The most recent statistics indicate it&amp;#039;s enjoying twice the economic growth of Sydney and a rush of foreign visitors, while tourism in the neighboring state of New South Wales has steadily declined since the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Perhaps more fuel for the ongoing urban rivalry, but proof positive Melbourne is indeed pretty marvelous. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elledecor.com/life-culture/travel/a3893/elle-decor-goes-to-melbourne-a-55305/>