North Terrace Museums, Adelaide

Adelaide put its public institutions along one street, and North Terrace is the result: the South Australian Museum, the Art Gallery of South Australia and the State Library stand in a row of colonial stone buildings, with the university behind them and the botanic garden at the eastern end. All three are free. The museum is best known for its Australian Aboriginal Cultures gallery, one of the largest collections of its kind anywhere, and for its Pacific holdings. The art gallery has strong Australian colonial and modern rooms in a series of top-lit halls. The library's Mortlock Wing, a galleried Victorian reading room, is the single most photographed interior in the city.

What you actually see

• The Aboriginal Cultures gallery - a very large ethnographic collection, arranged by region across two floors.
• The Mortlock Wing - the timber-galleried Victorian reading room in the State Library, open to walk into.
• The Art Gallery of South Australia - Australian colonial painting and modern work in a run of skylit halls.
• The boulevard itself - the row of stone facades, memorial gardens and old university buildings along the terrace.

When to go

All three open daily and are free, so this is easy to break across two half-days. Adelaide gets very hot in January and February, when the indoor route is welcome. Late February and March bring the festival season, when the city is busiest and accommodation prices climb. Weekday mornings are quiet almost year-round.

Honest expectations

The museum's displays are dated in parts, with old-fashioned cases and sparse labels, and the sheer volume of material in the Aboriginal Cultures gallery is hard to absorb without a guide. The art gallery is modest by national standards. Free entry means school groups fill the ground floors on weekday mornings in term time. Three institutions in one day is more than most people manage well.

Nearby

The Adelaide Botanic Garden sits at the eastern end and the Central Market is fifteen minutes south.