Melbourne Museum Wedding Photo Locations

Set in leafy Carlton Gardens and next to the World Heritage-listed Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne Museum is provides spaces for a destination wedding like no other! Within walking distance from the CBD, with a dedicated tram stop and plenty of underground parking, we have the access and capacity for any number of guests that you would like to invite.

Our spaces range from intimate, like the spiralling Kalaya ceremony room within the Bunjilaka Aboriginal Cultural Centre, to sprawling, such as the broad North Terrace overlooking Carlton Gardens, and the Main Foyer and Walk. The Foyer showcases the museum’s monumental architecture, which gives special occasions an inspiring atmosphere. Treetops, a purpose-built and recently renovated function room, is right next door to the North Terrace and provides the same beautiful aspect over the gardens through its floor-to-ceiling glass walls.

Melbourne museum is a rich response to Melbourne’s urban condition, and provides a place for education, history, culture and society to engage with each other in a contemporary setting. It is now an important part of Melbourne’s soft infrastructure and is consistently ranked as one of the most popular museums and tourist attractions in Australia, winning 'Best Tourist Attraction' at the Australian Tourism Awards in 2011.

The Melbourne Museum is a post-modernist building designed by Denton Corker Marshall Architects. Construction was managed by Baulderstone Hornibrook and completed in 2001, with the museum's official opening in 2000.

The building features a grid-like order that embraces eccentric metal clad forms extruding out and creating an irregular sculptural composition with moments of abstract colour throughout the building. The museum is arranged in an individual layout, referencing Melbourne’s iconic Hoddle Grid, which allows the importance of each component of the buildings historical, cultural and social significance to be read in loosely equal hierarchy and individuality. The building can be dissected into different spaces so an individual can navigate through and around the building in an orthogonal manner. It is designed as both a single building and a network of individual buildings integrated into the landscape of the Carlton Gardens.

The museum is axially aligned with the adjacent Italianate Royal Exhibition Building and references it, along with the skyscrapers of Melbourne’s central business district, with its monumental scale and protruding vertical facets. The sticks and blades that make up the Melbourne Museum are hallmarks of Denton Corker Marshall’s architecture.

The most prominent element of the building are the two very long, very high, sloping canopies (or blades) that rise up the from the centrally placed entrance opposite the north door of the Royal Exhibition Building; each act to guide visitors from the street into the Museum.

On the northern side of the building another larger blade-like roof rises up from the centre to the north, a landmark of similar scale to the central Florentine dome of the Royal Exhibition building.

The museum had its earliest beginnings in the Government Assay Office which on 9 March 1854, opened some displays in La Trobe Street. In 1858, Prof.Frederick McCoy (Sir Frederick from 1891), who was Professor of Natural History at the University of Melbourne, was appointed Director of the National Museum.

Melbourne Museum was originally located (along with the State Library and the old state gallery) in the city block between La Trobe, Swanston, Little Lonsdaleand Russell Streets - the nearby Museum underground railway station was originally named after it, although following the move the station was renamed Melbourne Central. The State Library now uses all the space in that building, the gallery also having moved to the NGV site in St Kilda Road.

The period in which the Victorian government was led by the Premier Sir Rupert Hamer (1972–1981) was one of policy development for museums in Victoria. Hamer's Arts Minister the Hon. Norman Lacy established a Museums Development Committee consisting of representatives of the Science Museum of Victoria, the National Museum of Victoria and the Ministry for the Arts. It considered such matters as the development of a single City Museum complex leading eventually to the establishment of the new Melbourne Museum in Carlton and programs in fields such as social history. The Committee also joined with a working party of the Victorian Council of the Arts to develop a comprehensive museums policy for Victoria. Lacy also began the establishment of the Heide Museum of Modern Art with the acquisition of the property Heide II (in Bulleen east of Melbourne) and a collection of 113 art works from John and Sunday Reed in August 1980. It was officially opened in November 1981. He also developed a proposal for a Museum of Social and Political History[3] at the Old Treasury Building for the Executive Committee of Victoria's 150th Anniversary Celebrations in July 1981 which led to the establishment of the City Museum.

The new Melbourne Museum next to the Exhibition Building in Carlton was constructed during the period of the Kennett government (1992–1999) was opened on 21 October 2000 by the Premier of Victoria at the time The Hon. Steve Bracks. The new Melbourne Museum included some significant changes to the historic methods of interpretation. One notable change was the inclusion of living organisms within the galleries. The centerpiece of the new building houses the Forest Gallery; a massive living and breathing exhibition offering a window into the tall forests of eastern Victoria. The Forest Gallery is home to the ongoing Forest Secrets exhibition which examines the agents of change within the forests. It includes hundreds of living plants and live animals such as birds, reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates. In 2004 Melbourne Museum took another unique step for an Australian museum and created the permanent Bugs Alive! exhibition. This ground breaking exhibition showcases the roles and life-cycles of the critically important animal group - the invertebrates. It features 50 living displays with an even greater number of species.

The new Melbourne Museum is located on the site of the former Melbourne Exhibition Speedway which operated from 5 November 1928 until 7 March 1936. The 413 yards (378 metres) dirt track speedway took place on a track laid out on the former sports oval and generally catered to motorcycle Solo and Sidecar racing and is considered to be the birthplace of Sidecar speedway racing. The inaugural Australian Sidecar Speedway Championship was staged there in 1931 and was won by Victorians Les Medlycott and "Tich" Jones. The Exhibition Speedway also hosted the Victorian Solo Championship from 1928/29 until 1934/35.

Check out all of Melbourne's Best Wedding Photo Locations