Experience Sydney like an insider with Monocle’s City Guide
The capital city of New South Wales rewards every return with its diverse landscape and retail scene. Explore our out-now guide to its best spots.
It should be mandatory for anyone born and raised in Sydney to leave the city for a few years. We Sydneysiders love to complain about this incredible place and leaving is the only cure that I have found for our penchant to gripe with “problems” the rest of the world dreams of having. For instance, there’s the ferry to work, which traverses the iconic harbour but can be late by a few minutes. The sloping hills, which make its landscape so interesting, are sometimes a bit annoying. Winters are warm enough that you only get to wear your big coat a handful of times a year. Imagine the horror.
We’re blissfully unaware of how good we have it. The things that many of us consider normal, even a borderline birthright, such as good coffee, safe streets and passionate opinions about pilates studios, are very much a privilege. I once met a man who commuted into the city by kayak and he acted as though it was the most ordinary thing in the world. He clearly needed time away for some perspective on true mundanity. It also took me leaving for university to fall in love with Sydney.
In our defence, however, Sydney hasn’t been without issues. The rapturous reception to the 2000 Olympic Games should have been a boon for soft power, the economy and culture. But the opportunity was squandered. Instead, the Harbour City saw 20 years of sluggish development; legislative and regulatory overreach hobbled the local economy; and its coronavirus response was stifling.
My first job out of university was as directory editor at Broadsheet, Australia’s leading city guide, where I covered dining spots and shops from Melbourne to Sydney. When I started in 2019, nearly every notable opening seemed to happen in the former. But by the time I left in 2021, it felt as though the opposite was the case. Sydney, freshly unleashed from its coronavirus-pandemic lockdowns and the worst of its notorious lockout laws, had the winds of change in its sails. It remembered that it had been, and could be again, the most important city in Australia.
That only continued when I moved back to Sydney and began writing for Monocle in 2022. There was always something new to cover: museums designed by renowned architects, vast public-transport overhauls and city-shaping infrastructure projects, not to mention a panoply of exciting new retail and hospitality operators. All of this was overlaid onto one of the world’s most idyllic urban landscapes. The nihilism of the 2000s was replaced by optimistic civic pride.
The city is ready for its big moment again and it won’t waste it this time. Our Sydney guide celebrates the institutions that endured the fallow years, as well as the new places that have bloomed on the other side of them. The difficulty of winnowing the selection down to the absolute essentials was, to me, the best proof of the city’s renaissance. I hope that a scroll through the guide improves your visit and fills you with the intention of coming back – because Sydney gets better every time, especially after some distance apart.
