State Library's Tour of Sydney

The State Library of NSW acknowledges the Gadigal people, the traditional custodians of the land and waters on which the Library was built.

Start at the base of the Mitchell Library steps. You may wish to fill up your water bottle in the Library’s amenities before you head off.

The Mitchell Library has been a landmark building along Macquarie Street since 1910. Over the years, the state’s premier public library has been captured in different ways by photographers, artists, and even in a children’s book.

The Best Cat, the Est Cat, published in 2021, is a children’s book about the Library and its rich collections, and references Trim, the famous ship’s cat who accompanied Matthew Flinders on his voyage to circumnavigate and map the coastline of Australia in 1801–03. The book was a collaboration between the Library and writer Libby Hathorn. The Library is home to one of the largest collections of children’s book original illustrations and manuscripts in the country.

As an Artist in Residence at the State Library, Wendy Sharpe created the artwork titled Front of Library. It shows the range of people that interact with the Library every day.

Conrad Martens (1801–1878) was arguably one of the finest and most prolific landscape artists of 19th-century Sydney. He planned a short visit to Sydney, but ended up staying a lifetime, setting up a studio, marrying and establishing a family.

Sydney Harbour and The Domain were among his favourite subjects. Two of his paintings capture views not far from where the Library now stands. The Library holds the world’s largest collection of his work, including oil paintings, watercolours, drawings, as well as his manuscripts and journals.

The Art Gallery of NSW traces its origins to the NSW Academy of Art in 1871. Its collection began with the Academy’s annual exhibitions and its first permanent exhibition space was associated with the Sydney International Exhibition of 1879.

Here you can find free exhibitions, public toilets and cafes. There is also the Edmund and Joanna Capon Research Library, home to the National Art Archive and the Ashley Dawson-Damer Children’s Art Library, a beautiful art library which is open to the public.

Allan Cunningham was an avid botanist whose work sent Australian plants across the globe. Cunningham’s quest for plants and scientific knowledge drove him to traverse vast tracts of south-eastern and north-western Australia between 1817 and 1828.

Cunningham died in Sydney in 1839 and was buried in the Devonshire Street Cemetery. His friends and admirers erected this obelisk to his memory in 1844. It is one of the earliest public monuments in Sydney. The cemetery was cleared to make way for Central Railway Station, and Cunningham’s remains were carefully disinterred and reverently placed within the obelisk, behind the marble plaque.

You are now walking along the reclaimed tidal flats of Wahganmuggalee. For generations, the flat ground at the head of the cove was a male ceremonial ground for Aboriginal groups that lived around the harbour. 

The sandstone outcrops around the harbour and the cliffs along the coast were important art sites for the Gadigal people and their neighbours. Indeed, Sydney has been described as ‘one of the largest open-air art galleries in the world’. There are over 600 known Aboriginal rock engraving sites around the city. Curious townsfolk such as police magistrate WA Miles sketched and recorded the rock engravings.

Music is a vibrant part of any society. The Sydney Conservatorium of Music was established in 1915. For over a century, it has led music education and supported outstanding musical performances, from classical to contemporary.

From concert programs and promotional posters to musical scores and albums, the Library’s collection documents the music culture of the nation. In 2015, the Library held a major retrospective exhibition of legendary rock and music photographer Tony Mott. His images of gigs, bands and musicians document the music scene from 1980 to 2015. The Library even formed the backdrop for some location shots! 

The Royal Australian Historical Society is the nation’s oldest historical organisation. It was founded in Sydney in 1901 and its first patron was David Scott Mitchell, the Australiana collector and Mitchell Library benefactor. Initially with a strong focus on Sydney’s European history, the Society’s membership has excelled in promoting local and community history.

Early members of the Royal Australian Historical Society were keen photographers. They recognised the historic value of photography in documenting the built environment. The State Library holds a large collection of photographs, photonegatives and glass plate negatives, captured and compiled by historical society members.

Industrial and manufacturing exhibitions were all the rage in the late 19th century. The Sydney International Exhibition, hosted in the Royal Botanic Garden, placed Sydney on the world stage in 1879.

The enchanting Garden Palace was purpose-built to house the exhibition. After the fair it continued to be used for government offices, the occasional event, and a government repository for records and a cultural store. All that went up in smoke when the Garden Palace burnt down on 22 September 1882. Many years later, the Library acquired a curious artefact — a piece of molten glass created by the Garden Palace fire.

The State Library of NSW is the oldest continuously operating library in Australia. The foundation of its collection is the Australian Subscription Library, established in 1826. As this name suggests, access to books was by a subscription fee membership. This was how most libraries operated in the 19th century.

The NSW Government purchased the collection and building in 1869 to form the Free Public Library of Sydney. The subscription fee was abolished and the doors thrown open for all to access the collection of 20,000 volumes. It was the first real public library for the people of NSW.

Built for Qantas Airways, this 1950s building with its curved glass façade projected an image of modernity and innovation. It was entirely constructed using locally sourced materials, a visible symbol of Australian enterprise.

The headquarters opened to great fanfare in 1957. Qantas’s vibrant advertising posters from 1965 proclaimed it to be ‘Australia’s Round-The-World Airline’, and targeted a modern holidaying Australian consumer. Many of these posters are now collectors’ items, admired for their graphic design. The Library has several examples of Qantas posters from the 1960s and 1970s.

This imposing Beaux-Arts neoclassical bank designed by Ross & Rowe was originally the headquarters of the Government Savings Bank of NSW. Construction began in 1925 and the building opened in 1928. 

The Wunderlich company was responsible for much of its exterior and interior decoration, and when it opened it was claimed to be the world’s largest banking chamber. Wunderlich was one of Australia’s most significant building companies. The business traced its origins to Redfern in 1889. The Library has a significant collection of Wunderlich Limited trade catalogues, as well as pictorial materials and ephemera.  

The elegant copper spire of St James’ Anglican Church reaches 53 metres and was a landmark in early Sydney. The church was Sydney’s tallest structure from 1822 to 1853. But looks can be deceiving. The spire was a last-minute addition. The building was originally designed by Francis Greenway for Governor Macquarie as a courthouse, but changes were made by Commissioner JT Bigge during construction as he considered it too extravagant. 

After construction on a planned St Andrew’s Cathedral in George Street stopped, it was decided that the building on Macquarie Street would become the colony’s new Anglican church. Consecrated in 1824, St James’ celebrated its 200th anniversary in 2024.

Hyde Park was reserved as open space, for use as a public park, by Governor Lachlan Macquarie in 1810. It has been a recreation site for Sydneysiders ever since.

It was dramatically remodelled in 1926 following the construction of Sydney’s underground railway. Architect and landscape designer Norman Weekes won a design competition to remodel the park. His layout incorporated two large-scale Art Deco memorials, the Archibald Fountain and the Anzac Memorial.

The Archibald Fountain exists because of one man: Jules François Archibald. When Archibald died in 1919, he bequeathed money for a memorial fountain, which recognised the relationship between Australia and France during the First World War. Co-founder and editor of The Bulletin, and patron of the arts, he set aside one-tenth of his estate to establish an art prize, the much-loved Archibald Prize.

Hyde Park Barracks was designed by architect Francis Greenway, who was a convict at the time, transported for forgery. Constructed between 1817 and 1819, the three-storey dormitory was built to house 600 unmarried male convicts.

Clothing has always functioned as a way to define class and social position. All convicts working on the chain gangs working around Sydney wore a government-issued ‘magpie’ outfit such as this one. The uniform’s distinctive colours made it easy to identify convicts, which deterred escape attempts, and was a deliberate method of public humiliation and exclusion. It was also incredibly hot and uncomfortable to wear.

Politics has long been dominated by men. Women in Australia couldn’t even vote until the 20th century. The Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902 gave white women the right to vote in, and stand for, national elections in June 1902. Full political enfranchisement for women in NSW came slowly, and piecemeal, over the following decades. The NSW Women’s Legal Status Act 1918 was passed in December 1918 and allowed women to be elected to the NSW Legislative Assembly.

The indomitable Millicent Preston-Stanley was the first female member of the NSW Legislative Assembly. She was elected in the seat of Eastern Suburbs from 1925 to 1927.

Navigator and explorer Matthew Flinders was the first European to circumnavigate the Australian continent, but his Aboriginal colleague and crew member Bungaree too often gets overlooked.

Bungaree, who was born around 1775 and died in 1830, is notable as the first Aboriginal Australian to circumnavigate the continent, accompanying Flinders on the circumnavigation voyage of 1801–03. Originally from Garigal country, near present-day Broken Bay just north of Sydney, Bungaree was recognised as a leader among his people.

Bungaree was something of a celebrity around the Sydney colony. He was the most commonly depicted figure, and appeared in many sketches and illustrations, cementing his iconic status for many colonists and visiting strangers.