Hobart, Tasmania: Australia's Second-Oldest City at the World's Edge

MONA — the Museum of Old and New Art — would be unusual anywhere. In Hobart, Tasmania, a car-ferry ride from the city center, it is extraordinary. David Walsh, a professional gambler, built the museum underground in a former quarry and filled it with work that is often challenging and occasionally confrontational. The permanent collection is strong: works by Wim Delvoye, Berlinde De Bruyckere, and Chris Ofili alongside ancient Egyptian antiquities. The museum opens at 10:00 Wednesday through Monday and is closed Tuesdays. The ferry from Brooke Street Pier is the recommended approach; it takes twenty-five minutes.

Salamanca Place is the preserved sandstone warehouse district on the waterfront, built in the 1830s and 1840s to service the whaling and grain trade. The Salamanca Arts Centre occupies several of the buildings; the Saturday Salamanca Market (the largest outdoor market in Australia) fills the entire street with produce, craft, and food stalls from 8:00 to 3:00. If you arrive on a Saturday, the market is worth orienting your morning around.

Mount Wellington — Kunanyi in the Palawa language — rises 1,271 meters directly behind the city. The summit road is accessible by taxi or rental car and is paved to the top. From the lookout, on a clear day, you can see the entire Derwent estuary and, on the western horizon, what appears to be the edge of the world. A 4.5-kilometer walking track from Fern Tree descends through temperate rainforest.

The Battery Point neighborhood, immediately south of Salamanca, is Hobart's best-preserved colonial district — narrow streets of Georgian cottages dating from the 1820s and 1830s. Arthur's Circus, a tiny circular common ringed by Georgian terraces, is one of the most complete Victorian streetscapes in Australia. The walk from Salamanca through Battery Point to Sandy Bay takes about forty-five minutes and is flat.

Franklin Square and the waterfront precinct have a concentration of restaurants and small bars that punches well above what a city of 240,000 should be able to support. The seafood — Atlantic salmon, abalone, sea urchin — is genuinely exceptional.