Adelaide

Why go

A city inside a park — seven hundred hectares of green ring the grid on all four sides, unbuildable by law since 1837. Two wine regions within an hour — the Barossa and McLaren Vale, and the Adelaide Hills between them. A festival state — March fills the parklands with the Fringe, the Festival and WOMADelaide at once. A city that plans and then leaves things alone — the colonial grid survives because nobody was allowed to spoil it.

The character

Colonel William Light surveyed Adelaide in 1837 as a grid of five squares on the plain, wrapped entirely in a belt of parkland, and the South Australian colony's founding legislation protected that belt from development. Nearly two centuries later it is still there — cricket ovals, wetlands, botanic gardens and open grass — and the city feels like a small town because of it with a capital's institutions.

The colony was also unusual in its origins: settled by free migrants rather than convicts, including German Lutherans who arrived in the 1840s and planted the Barossa's first vines. That inheritance gave South Australia its wine industry and Adelaide its slightly nonconformist civic streak — the state legalised what others banned, from Aboriginal land rights to shop trading hours, decades early. The city is unhurried and easy to underestimate. What it offers is a rare combination: a walkable grid, serious food and wine culture, a beach at the end of a tram line and hills full of vineyards twenty minutes from a parliament building.

Places of character

Adelaide Central Market — trading since 1869, seventy stalls; the best single food building in Australia. Art Gallery of South Australia — a colonial collection with the country's strongest Aboriginal art holdings. North Terrace — the cultural boulevard: museum, gallery, university and library in one line. Glenelg by tram — the 1929 tram runs from the city to the beach in half an hour and locals use it daily. The parklands at dawn — runners, cricketers, kangaroos in the outer sections; the belt in daily use. Hahndorf and the Adelaide Hills — Australia's oldest surviving German settlement, twenty minutes up the freeway.

The way to do it

Base yourself in the grid and walk it; the whole city centre is one square mile. Take a driver for the wine regions or use the small-group tours — the Barossa in particular deserves an unhurried day. Time a visit to March if you like festivals, and to February or April if you do not. Eat at the market, at least twice.

One perfect day

Coffee and a pastry at the Central Market when the traders are still setting up, then North Terrace: the South Australian Museum's Aboriginal cultures gallery, then the art gallery next door. Walk out through the parklands to the Botanic Garden and the Palm House. Lunch in Peel Street's laneway restaurants. Afternoon tram to Glenelg for a swim and a walk along the jetty as the wind comes up. Back to the city for an early aperitif in a Leigh Street bar, then dinner where the wine list runs to two hundred South Australian growers and the waiter has an opinion about every one.

Grand hotels

Mayfair Hotel — the restored 1934 Colonial Mutual Life building on King William Street, the city's traditional address. The Louise, Barossa Valley — an hour out among the vines; the definitive contemporary address for the wine country.

When to go

Best expression: March, when the Festival, the Fringe and WOMADelaide overlap and the parklands fill with tents. Consider: April and May, harvest done, warm days, and the Hills turning. Avoid if possible: the January heatwaves, when the city can pass forty degrees for a week at a time.

The frame

Ideal stay 3 nights · Minimum 2 nights · Best arrival by air, then a fifteen-minute taxi · Airport ADL, 7 km · Walkability exceptional; the grid is one square mile · Best without a car in the city yes, for wine country no