Back in the top 10 of our world’s best cities list this year, Sydney is beloved—practically a cliché of a beautiful, creative, liveable city. I’ve returned half a dozen times despite it being on the other side of the world from my home in New York, eyeing property in Surry Hills as I get older.
Its long, laid-back summer season arrives in December with an annual roster of festivals and arts events punctuated by one of the world’s largest Pride celebrations, the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival, in its 47th year (February 14–March 2). The biggest development is coming out of Blackwattle Bay (yes, it sounds like a battle site in Game of Thrones), where the self-styled “most significant harbourside building since the Sydney Opera House” nears completion. Find out about that, and much more, happening in Sydney as we enter the new year.
Sydney Fish Market, “Australia’s home of seafood” is open from 7 a.m. every day except Christmas.
Photo by Byvalet/Shutterstock
Neighborhood watch: Pyrmont
Since the 1960s, the Sydney Fish Market has been central to the local seafood industry; people would gather at the wholesaler for seafood auctions, fish held high like trophies while buyers on the other side of a fence would bid. Nowadays, the site attracts 3 million visitors annually to touristy Pyrmont, which is also home to the Australian National Maritime Museum and massive Star Sydney complex, with a hotel, casino, and the Sydney Lyric Theater, which brings in blockbuster touring musicals like Hamilton (now on stage) and MJ: The Musical (coming February 2025). Yet with an injection of A$750 million (US$487 million), a brand-new Sydney Fish Market will open in “early 2025,” designed to be a functioning fish market—looking the part with a wave-shaped, scale-patterned roof—as well as a new destination dining center.
Much is still under wraps but we know the Sydney Seafood School will continue its cooking classes; Secret Sydney confirmed a new Southeast Asian restaurant by Vietnamese Australian celebrity chef Luke Nguyen and an outpost of popular Malaysian street food spot Ho Jiak. Visitors can also enjoy the new waterfront promenade, public park, and bike path along Blackwattle Bay.
The Art Gallery of New South Wales gets surreal this (Southern Hemisphere) summer with a new exhibition of artworks by Magritte.
Photo by Ken Leanfore
Visual arts
Since opening in December 2022, the Sydney Modern Project has doubled the exhibition space—and opportunity—at the historic Art Gallery of New South Wales. Inside the new stand-alone building, itself a natural-light-filled work of art by Pritzker Prize–winning architects SANAA, is a permanent gallery for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artwork and a space committed to featuring more women artists. The summer season’s blockbuster exhibits include more than 100 works by the Belgian surrealist Magritte through February 9, and a retrospective with two new commissions by thrilling Beijing-based artist Cao Fei (pronounced tsow fay). Cao’s My City Is Yours “is an invitation into a world of neon, street dance, and pop music; a city both familiar and warped, real and virtual,” the site says. “Enter the exhibition via a replica 1960s Beijing cinema foyer, and exit through a homage to a popular Sydney yum cha restaurant” (through April 16, 2025). Coming October 11, 2025, is Dangerously Modern, a showcase of 50 Australian female artists in Europe from 1890 to 1940.
Family fun
For the family: The traveling exhibit Machu Picchu and the Golden Empires of Peru takes up residence at the Australian Museum through February 23, 2025. More than 130 Andean artifacts—jewelry, ceramics, bling from the royal tombs—are on display, along with VR explorations of Peru. Best time to visit: Wednesday nights through January, when the museum will stay open late as part of the Sydney Festival.
Performing arts
What is the Sydney Festival, you ask? A massive, multidisciplinary celebration akin to Edinburgh Fringe that will take over the city in January 2025 with theater and dance performances, “unauthorized” Siegfried and Roy operas, concerts by Rufus Wainwright and rising soul stars Yaya Bey and Jalen Ngonda, and a lot more. I’m particularly intrigued by the new plays by Indigenous writers at Belvoir St. Theatre: Jacky was called “incredibly uncomfortable, thoughtful theater” by the Guardian when it debuted in Melbourne in 2023; meanwhile, Big Girls Don’t Cry takes place in 1966 Redfern, the First Nations community in Sydney, on the eve of a deb ball.
Checking in
The Eve Hotel Sydney is set to open February 13, 2025, as part of the new “lifestyle precinct” (another way to say “mall”?) Wunderlich Lane, on the border of the Redfern and Surry Hills neighborhoods. Just outside the city center, this area is already rich with street art, cool cafés and restaurants like Taylor Swift–approved Italian trattoria Pellegrino 2000, and cultural centers like Paramount House, home to a boutique hotel, retro cinema, buzzy co-working café, across from must-try Thai restaurant Chin Chin.
The Eve worked with local designers and textiles to craft the vibe: 102 rooms in soft curves and organic fabrics, many with Juliet balconies fringed with ivy, and gardens from ground to rooftop, fully embracing Sydney’s love of the outdoors. On the rooftop are some of the best amenities: an all-weather Mexican restaurant and mezcaleria by Sydney’s Liquid & Larder hospitality group and a serene 20-meter pool with cabanas (open 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.!). It’s the most anticipated hotel opening of the year, and it gives us yet another reason to set a home base in the Surry Hills/Redfern area on our next trip.
