What to Do in Hobart: The Complete Guide to Tasmania’s Capital

Hobart is Australia’s second-oldest city and, in the opinion of many travellers who’ve been there, its most underrated. While Sydney and Melbourne dominate Australia’s city tourism, Hobart sits quietly at the bottom of the world — a compact, beautiful, utterly distinctive city on the banks of the Derwent River, backed by the dramatic bulk of Mount Wellington — and gets on with being excellent without making much fuss about it.

I’ve visited Hobart several times, and it gets better every time. The food and drink scene has become genuinely world-class. MONA — the Museum of Old and New Art — has transformed the city’s cultural identity. The surrounding wilderness is extraordinary. And the city itself, with its beautiful Georgian architecture, its working waterfront, and its easy-going pace, is a pleasure to spend time in.

This guide covers everything worth doing in Hobart, from the famous to the lesser-known. Whether you’re here for a weekend or a week, this city has more to offer than most visitors expect — and it rewards travellers who take the time to go beyond the main highlights and dig into what makes Hobart so distinctively itself.

📋 TL;DR — the quick version

• ✅ MONA: The Museum of Old and New Art is one of the most extraordinary art museums in the world — don’t miss it.
• 🏔️ Mount Wellington: Drive or walk to the summit for views across Hobart, the river, and the Tasman Peninsula.
• 🐟 Salamanca Market: Every Saturday morning — fresh produce, craft, art, and street food in a beautiful sandstone setting.
• 🍷 Food and drink: Hobart’s restaurant and bar scene punches way above its weight — plan to eat and drink well.
• 🛥️ Get on the water: A ferry to MONA or a harbour cruise gives you the best views of the city from the Derwent River.
• 🌿 Day trips: Port Arthur, the Huon Valley, and the Tasman Peninsula are all within an hour or two.
• 🗓️ MONA FOMA and Dark Mofo: Plan around these festivals if you can — they transform the city.

🎨 MONA — the museum that changed everything

The Museum of Old and New Art — MONA — opened in 2011 on a riverside peninsula north of Hobart and immediately transformed not just the city but the entire Tasmanian tourism industry. Created by eccentric billionaire David Walsh using winnings from his professional gambling career, MONA is housed in a vast multi-level space carved into the sandstone cliff of the peninsula, and it contains one of the most provocative and extraordinary private art collections in the world.

MONA deliberately refuses to label its artworks in conventional ways. Instead, visitors use the “O” device — a phone-based guide — to explore works at their own pace and in their own order. The collection includes ancient Egyptian mummies alongside contemporary works that deal with sex, death, excrement, and religious provocation — often in the same room. It’s confronting, hilarious, moving, and entirely unlike any other museum experience.

The ferry from Brooke Street Pier in central Hobart is the best way to arrive — the 25-minute journey up the Derwent is beautiful, and arriving by boat feels appropriately dramatic for such a dramatic destination. Allow a full day; many visitors find they need to come back for a second visit to process what they’ve seen. The restaurants and bars at MONA are excellent and worth booking for lunch.

🎭 MONA FOMA and Dark Mofo festivals

MONA runs two major festivals each year: MONA FOMA in January (a world-class music and arts festival) and Dark Mofo in June (a festival of darkness, fire, music, and art tied to the winter solstice). Both attract international acts and sell out quickly. If your visit coincides with either festival, buy tickets as soon as they go on sale — the atmosphere in Hobart during these events is electric and unlike anything else in Australia.

🏔️ Mount Wellington — the mountain that watches over the city

Mount Wellington (Kunanyi) rises 1,271 metres directly behind Hobart and dominates the city in a way that few urban mountains manage. From the summit — reached by road in about 20 minutes from the city centre, or by foot via several excellent trails — the view across Hobart, the Derwent River, and the Tasman Peninsula is extraordinary on a clear day. You can see all the way to Freycinet Peninsula in the east and the Huon Valley to the south.

The summit can be cold and windy even in summer — temperatures are typically 10–15°C cooler than in the city below — so bring warm layers regardless of what it feels like in town. Snow falls on the summit several times a year, including occasionally in summer, which creates the bizarre and beautiful sight of snow on the mountain visible from Hobart’s sunny waterfront.

The walk to the summit from the Organ Pipes car park is about 2.5 kilometres (one way) and takes about 1.5 hours. The Pinnacle Track from the city is a longer, full-day walk. Cyclists can descend from the summit on a dedicated mountain bike track — several operators in Hobart offer guided descent tours with bike hire included.

🐟 Salamanca Market and the historic precinct

Salamanca Place is a row of beautiful Georgian sandstone warehouses built in the 1830s for the merchant trade. Today they house galleries, restaurants, bars, and shops — and every Saturday morning, Salamanca Market spreads across the cobblestones in front of them. The market is one of Australia’s best, with over 300 stalls selling fresh produce, handmade crafts, Tasmanian art, street food, and every kind of small-batch product you can imagine.

Worth adding to your itinerary: Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race Start and Best Things to Do in Hobart.

If you’re visiting on a Saturday, give yourself the entire morning for the market. The smoked salmon bagels, the Tasmanian cheese stalls, and the local honey and jam producers alone are worth the visit. Browse slowly, eat freely, and explore the galleries and shops in the warehouse buildings behind the stalls.

Battery Point — the neighbourhood immediately behind Salamanca Place — is Hobart’s most historic residential area, a warren of Victorian cottages, Georgian mansions, and winding lanes that has barely changed in 150 years. Walking through it feels like stepping back in time, and it’s completely free. Look for Arthur’s Circus — a small circle of Georgian worker’s cottages around a village green that is one of the most charming streetscapes in Australia.

🍷 Food and drink in Hobart

Hobart’s food scene has undergone a remarkable transformation over the past decade and is now genuinely world-class. The city benefits from extraordinary local produce — salmon and seafood from the cold Tasmanian waters, beef and lamb from the clean pastures, vegetables from the fertile Huon Valley, and some of Australia’s most exciting whisky, beer, and wine.

Franklin is widely regarded as one of Australia’s best restaurants — a wood-fired kitchen in a beautiful heritage building that serves Tasmanian produce with genuine creativity. Fico is an Italian-influenced fine diner with a focus on local produce. Aloft at MONA is spectacular for a special occasion. For more casual eating, the Drunken Admiral on the waterfront for seafood, the Pilgrim Coffee for breakfast, and the Willing Bros wine bar for natural wines and share plates are all excellent choices.

The Cascade Brewery — Australia’s oldest continually operating brewery — offers brewery tours and tastings in a beautiful historic building at the foot of Mount Wellington. The whisky distilleries in the surrounding region (Lark, Sullivans Cove, Old Kempton) are world-class and increasingly well-known internationally — book a tour and tasting at Lark Distillery’s cellar door on the Hobart waterfront.

👉 Book a Hobart food and culture tour on GetYourGuide →

🛥️ Get on the Derwent River

The Derwent River is central to Hobart’s identity and best experienced from the water. The MONA ferry is the obvious option, but there are several other ways to get on the river that reward the effort. The Peppermint Bay cruise runs from Hobart south to Woodbridge, passing beautiful farmland and waterways with lunch included. Kayak tours from the city centre take you under the Tasman Bridge and into quieter waterways where black swans and cormorants are common sights.

Watching the Sydney to Hobart yacht race finish — which happens between Christmas and New Year — is one of Hobart’s great annual spectacles. Hundreds of yachts pour through Storm Bay into the Derwent, and the city comes alive with sailors, spectators, and celebration. The Constitution Dock in the city centre is the traditional finish line, and the atmosphere around it during race week is festive and electric.

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🏛️ Port Arthur — a day trip to Tasmania’s most haunting site

Port Arthur, about 100 kilometres southeast of Hobart on the Tasman Peninsula, is the site of Australia’s most significant convict settlement. Between 1833 and 1877, over 12,000 convicts were transported here and forced to work in the timber and coal industries. The ruins of the settlement are hauntingly beautiful — grand sandstone buildings set in manicured gardens overlooking a deep blue bay — and the museum and audio guides bring the stories of the convicts to vivid, moving life.

A Port Arthur day trip from Hobart typically takes six to seven hours return and includes stops at the Tessellated Pavement, the Tasman Arch, and the dramatic sea cliffs of the Tasman Peninsula along the way. The ghost tour in the evening — after the day visitors have gone — is atmospheric and surprisingly unsettling. Book ahead in peak season.

👉 Book a Port Arthur day trip from Hobart on GetYourGuide →

🌿 Day trips from Hobart

The Huon Valley, south of Hobart, is Tasmania’s fruit-growing heartland — a beautiful region of orchards, forests, and river valleys that’s worth a day of slow exploration. The Huon Valley Apple and Heritage Museum in Huonville tells the story of the region’s apple-growing history. The Get Shucked Oyster Farm on Bruny Island — reached via a short ferry from Kettering — is one of the best oyster experiences in Australia. Drive to the very end of the Huon Highway for views across Recherche Bay, one of Tasmania’s most remote and beautiful spots.

Freycinet National Park — about two and a half hours north of Hobart — offers the famous Wineglass Bay, pink granite mountains, and superb coastal walking. It’s best as an overnight trip, but the views from the Wineglass Bay lookout can be done as a long day trip from Hobart if you leave early. Bruny Island is another excellent option — a large island off the south coast with extraordinary wildlife, cheese, wine, and one of Australia’s most remote lighthouses.

Hobart is the kind of city that feels like a discovery. It doesn’t announce itself the way Sydney does, or demand attention the way Melbourne does. But once you’re there, once you’ve walked through Salamanca on a Saturday morning and watched the light on Mount Wellington change colour, once you’ve spent a full day getting lost inside MONA, you’ll understand exactly why it’s considered by many to be the most liveable city in Australia.