Old Melbourne Cemetery

The Queen Victoria Market (also known locally as Vic Market or Queen Vic) is a major landmark in Melbourne, Australia, and at around seven hectares (17 acres) is the largest open air market in the Southern Hemisphere.

The Queen Victoria Market is the largest and most intact surviving 19th century market in the city. The Melbourne central business district once hosted three major markets, but two of them, the Eastern Market and Western Market, both opened before the Queen Victoria, and were both closed and demolished in the 1960s. Other historic markets survive in Melbourne, such as the inner suburban Prahran Market and South Melbourne Market, though only Prahran has any early buildings. The Queen Victoria Market is historically, architecturally and socially significant and has been listed on the Victorian Heritage Register. It has become an increasingly important tourist attraction in the city of Melbourne.

Queen Victoria Market occupies two city blocks; one rectangular block bounded by Victoria, Peel, Franklin and Elizabeth Streets and one eastern irregular block bounded by Queen, Victoria, Elizabeth and Therry Streets. The market was established in the late 1860s to serve as both a wholesale and retail market for the rapidly growing population of the city of Melbourne. The centrally located Queen Victoria Market replaced a number of smaller markets situated in different parts of the city. The site was developed in stages from 1867 through to 1936 when the site was fully developed. Throughout the twentieth and twenty-first century, the market has undergone minor expansions and upgrades. Proposals for more substantial re-developments continue to the present time. The site, now occupied by the Queen Victoria Market complex, has a long and varied history, including a cemetery, an orderly room, a rifle range, a long gone street, a livestock market, and a wholesale fruit and vegetable market.

The Western Market was Melbourne’s first official fruit and vegetable market, established a mere 6 years after settlement began. Ultimately a wholesale cased fruit market, it lasted for ninety years taking up the entire block bounded by Market, Collins and Williams Streets and Flinders Lane in the middle of Melbourne’s central business district.

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