Paddington, New South Wales

Paddington is Sydney's showcase of Victorian terrace housing, an inner-eastern suburb of steep streets lined with lacy iron-balconied rows built during the 1870s and 1880s boom. Once a working-class district that slid into decline, it was rescued by conservationists in the 1960s and is now one of the most tightly preserved nineteenth-century streetscapes in Australia.

Oxford Street is the spine. The strip carries boutiques, galleries, bookshops and cafes, and on Saturdays the Paddington Markets fill the grounds of a church with fashion, jewellery and craft stalls — a launchpad for several Australian designers. Side streets such as William and Glenmore reward slow wandering past narrow shopfronts and hidden courtyards.

History runs deep here. Victoria Barracks, a sandstone Georgian military complex still in use, occupies a long block off Oxford Street and opens for tours. Nearby, the White Rabbit Gallery and a scatter of commercial art spaces give the suburb a contemporary edge, while Five Ways, a five-cornered junction, gathers a knot of pubs and eateries in a village-like pocket.

Practical notes: the suburb is hilly, so comfortable shoes help, but it is compact and easily explored on foot from the city via buses along Oxford Street. Weekends are busiest, especially market Saturdays; weekday mornings are quieter for photographing the terraces. Dining and shopping skew upmarket, in keeping with the suburb's gentrified character, though the pubs remain relaxed. Combine a visit with neighbouring Woollahra and the green expanse of Centennial Park just to the south for a full day in Sydney's eastern suburbs. The Juniper Hall Georgian mansion and a scatter of small theatres add cultural weight, while the tree-lined side streets, dense with restored terraces in heritage tones, rank among the most photogenic residential streetscapes in the country.