The Hotel Windsor

The Windsor opened in 1883 at the top of Collins Street's rise, and it remains the only Australian city hotel of the grand Victorian era still trading in something like its original form. Its mansarded facade faces Parliament House across Spring Street, and the building's place in national history is secure: the drafting of Australia's constitution in 1898 is associated with its rooms. Marble stairs, stained glass and a colonnaded dining room preserve the period with unusual completeness.

Rooms and suites favour traditional comfort — high ceilings, classic furnishings, marble bathrooms — over contemporary styling, and vary in size as old buildings do; the grand suites on the Spring Street front are the ones with true occasion. What the Windsor lacks in pools and panoramic bars it repays in position, with the Princess Theatre next door, Treasury Gardens across the way and the laneway food culture of central Melbourne within minutes on foot.

The hotel's celebrated afternoon tea, served in the chandeliered Grand Ballroom setting at weekends, has been a Melbourne institution for generations and remains the signature experience. Service runs warm and personal rather than corporate. For travellers who collect the world's surviving nineteenth-century grand hotels, the Windsor is Australia's essential entry.