In Hobart's early days, the leafy hill on the city’s northern side became the governor’s private playground, upon which no houses were to be built. Today the hillock is called the Queen’s Domain and is public parkland, strewn with cricket, tennis and athletics centres, the Hobart Aquatic Centre, native grasslands, lookouts, the Cenotaph and the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens. Pedestrian overpasses on the western side provide easy access to North Hobart.


Lonely Planet's must-see attractions

Nearby Hobart attractions

1. Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens

0.22 MILES

On the eastern side of the Queen's Domain park, these beguiling 200-year-old gardens feature more than 6000 exotic and native plant species. Picnic on the…

2. Hobart Convict Penitentiary

0.58 MILES

The courtrooms, cells and gallows at 'the Tench' had a hellish reputation in the 1800s, and every convict in Tasmania passed through here. The barracks…

3. Cenotaph

0.71 MILES

Part of the broader Queen's Domain, the epic Cenotaph monument forms a visual finishing point if you look down the looong axis of Macquarie St from South…

4. Theatre Royal

0.74 MILES

Hobart’s prestigious (and very precious) Theatre Royal has been host to bombastic thespians since 1837, and despite a major fire in 1984, it remains…

5. North Hobart

0.75 MILES

Hobart at its most bohemian, the Elizabeth St strip in North Hobart (aka NoHo) is lined with dozens of cafes, restaurants, bars and pubs – enough to keep…

6. Gasworks Cellar Door

0.79 MILES

If you want Tasmania's far-flung wine regions distilled into one experience, duck into the Gasworks Cellar Door, which is effectively a museum of wine and…

7. Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery

0.89 MILES

Incorporating Tasmania's oldest surviving public building, the Commissariat Store (1808), TMAG features Aboriginal and colonial relics and an excellent…

8. Allport Library & Museum of Fine Arts

0.91 MILES

The State Library is home to this excellent collection of rare books on the Australia-Pacific region, as well as colonial paintings, antiques, photographs…