Richmond
Richmond sits just 3 kilometres from the CBD, close enough that five train lines pass through its main station, yet the suburb has its own distinct grain — Victorian workers' cottages pressed up against converted warehouses, public housing towers casting long shadows over terrace rooftops, Vietnamese grocers on Victoria Street doing business beside wine bars on Swan Street. First land was sold here in 1839, and the place has been reinventing itself ever since.
Three major commercial strips — Victoria Street, Bridge Road, Swan Street — run roughly parallel through the suburb, each with a different personality. You can move between them on foot in under ten minutes, which is the best way to understand how many Richmonds exist within the one postcode.
💛 What travellers fall for
People who keep coming back tend to anchor their day on Victoria Street for pho in the morning, then drift down to Swan Street for the afternoon. Barkly Gardens — the only 19th-century garden square still intact in Richmond — is the sort of place regulars use as a reset point between the two.
Deals in Richmond
Book directly at the providerHow Richmond came to be
The Woiwurrung people knew this land as Quo-yung, a name recorded by Alfred Howitt with a possible meaning of 'dead trees'. European settlement arrived fast: first land sales in 1839, municipal status in 1855, and by the 1860s industry had claimed the river flats for easy waste removal. The decades that followed filled the streets with workers' cottages and factory smoke.
The single most consequential change of the 20th century came quietly: Vietnamese refugees arriving in the late 1970s and early 1980s settled along Victoria Street and built a community that still defines the suburb's character. Gentrification followed from the early 1990s, layering warehouse apartments and wine bars over the older industrial fabric without quite erasing it. Richmond incorporated as a municipality on 24 April 1855 and held city status from 1882 until its absorption into the City of Yarra in 1994.
Who and what shaped it
People who shaped it
Landmark buildings
Plan your visit
On the map
When to go
Melbourne's weather applies in full force here — summers (December to February) run hot and occasionally extreme, while winters are mild but reliably grey and damp. Spring and autumn are the most comfortable seasons for walking the commercial strips, though a jacket is sensible any time of year.
Right now
Background & history adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA) · specs from Wikidata (CC0) · weather from Open-Meteo · map data © OpenStreetMap contributors · photos from Wikimedia Commons / Unsplash with per-image credit. No third-party reviews or social posts reproduced.