National Gallery of Victoria

Put your palm flat against the glass at the entrance. It is cool, and it is wet. A thin sheet of water runs down the wall in front of you, and behind it the shapes of people inside blur and ripple. Children press their faces close. Adults pretend they are not about to do the same thing. This water wall is the first thing most people remember about the National Gallery of Victoria, and that is exactly what its designers hoped for.

You are standing on Saint Kilda Road, the wide, tree-lined avenue that runs south from the centre of Melbourne. Trams rattle past behind you. Just across the way, the tall lattice spire of Arts Centre Melbourne rises above the theatres. The Yarra River is a short walk north. This stretch of road is the city's arts precinct, and the gallery sits at the heart of it, a long, low block of grey stone surrounded by a moat.

Look at that stone for a moment. It is bluestone, a dark volcanic basalt quarried in Victoria. Much of old Melbourne was built from it, from kerbs and laneways to churches and gaols. The building is deliberately heavy and closed, almost like a fortress. There are very few windows on the street side. The idea was simple — shut out the noise and glare of the city, so that everything inside could have your full attention.

The gallery itself is much older than this building. It was founded in 1861, which makes it the oldest public art museum in Australia. Melbourne was rich in those years. The gold rush had filled the city with money and ambition, and its new citizens wanted the institutions of a great European capital. For about a century, the collection lived on Swanston Street, sharing a site with the State Library. It moved here, to its own purpose-built home, in 1968.

The architect of this building was Roy Grounds, one of the leading Australian modernists of his generation. Modernism, in architecture, means clean lines, simple geometric forms, and very little decoration. Grounds gave the gallery a strict rectangular plan arranged around inner courtyards. Some people found it cold when it opened. Over the decades, though, Melburnians grew fond of it. When the interior was renewed around the turn of the century, the water wall, the moat and the bluestone shell were kept.

Now step inside and walk towards the back of the building. You will reach the Great Hall. Here is the surprise that many first-time visitors almost miss. Look straight up. The entire ceiling is made of stained glass, a vast canopy of coloured light designed by the Australian artist Leonard French. It is often described as one of the largest suspended stained-glass ceilings in the world.

And here is the local secret. Nobody expects you to crane your neck. Melburnians lie down. Find a clear patch of carpet, lie on your back, and let the colours settle above you. Deep blues, ambers, reds and greens, set in heavy, irregular shapes. On a bright afternoon the light shifts slowly as clouds move overhead. It is one of the few places in a major gallery where lying on the floor is a normal thing to do.

The collection grew quickly in its early decades, but one gift changed its scale. Alfred Felton was a Melbourne businessman and art collector who died in 1904. He left a large part of his fortune to the gallery, to be used for buying art. The Felton Bequest allowed Melbourne to compete with much older museums for important works from Europe. For many years, it made this gallery one of the best-funded art buyers in the English-speaking world.

One of the treasures bought with that money is a grand painting by the Venetian artist Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, called The Banquet of Cleopatra. It shows the Egyptian queen at a lavish feast with the Roman general Mark Antony. The painting came to Melbourne in the 1930s, after the Soviet government sold works from Russian collections. Look for the pearl in Cleopatra's hand. In the old story, she dissolves it in vinegar to win a bet about the most expensive meal.

The gallery also has a real-life crime story. In 1986, Pablo Picasso's painting Weeping Woman was stolen from the walls here. A group calling itself the Australian Cultural Terrorists claimed the theft and sent letters demanding more money for the arts. Some weeks later, the painting was found, unharmed, in a railway station locker in central Melbourne. Nobody was ever convicted. The painting is still part of the collection today.

This building, known as NGV International, holds art from around the world — European old masters, Asian ceramics and textiles, fashion, design, photography and contemporary work. The gallery's Australian collection lives in a second building, the Ian Potter Centre at Federation Square, a short walk across the river. That site opened in 2002. There you will find Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art, alongside colonial landscapes and modern Australian painting.

The gallery is not only a place of old treasures. Each year, it stages a large winter exhibition, often built around a famous artist or collection from overseas. Since 2017, it has also held the NGV Triennial, a huge survey of contemporary art and design held every three years. During these shows, the Great Hall and the courtyards often fill with large installations. The building you are walking through can look quite different from one visit to the next.

Before you leave, find your way to the garden at the rear of the building. It is a quieter space, with lawns, trees and sculpture set among the paths. Office workers eat lunch here. Families let children run. It is a good place to sit for a few minutes, and let your eyes rest after the galleries. From here, you can also see how the low bluestone walls meet the open sky.

As you walk back out towards Saint Kilda Road, pause once more at the water wall. Watch someone else reach out and touch it for the first time. Then listen. The traffic and the trams return, the city closes in again. Behind you, the coloured glass of the Great Hall is still catching the light, whether anyone is lying beneath it or not.