Canberra, Australia

In 1912 Walter Burley Griffin, an American landscape architect from Chicago, won the international competition for the design of the future Australian capital: his plan envisaged a garden city for about 25,000 people, which took into account the natural features of the landscape. There were to be five main centres, each with separate city functions, located on three axes: land, water and municipal. Roads were to be in concentric circles, with arcs linking the radiating design. Construction started in 1913, but political squabbling and the effects of World War I prevented any real progress being made. Little building had been done, in fact, by the time Griffin left the site in 1920, and only in 1927 was the provisional parliament building officially opened. By 1930 some one thousand families had settled in the capital. Then the Depression set in, World War II broke out and development slowed again. After more years of stagnation, the National Capital Development Commission (NCDC) was finally established in 1958, and at last growth began in earnest.

In 1963 the Molonglo River was dammed to form a lake 11km wide, the artificial Lake Burley Griffin that is the centrepiece of modern CANBERRA. Numerous open spaces and public buildings came into existence, as a real city started to emerge. Slowly, the Civic Centre near London Circuit began to live up to its name. The population grew rapidly, from fifteen thousand in 1947 to over one hundred thousand in 1967; today, it is more than three hundred thousand. This population growth has been accommodated in satellite towns with their own centres: Woden, 12km south of the Civic Centre, was built in the mid-1960s; five years later Belconnen was added in the northwest; and in the mid-1970s Tuggeranong in the south. It was this sprawl that fostered Canberra's image as "a cluster of suburbs in search of a centre".

Inevitably, modern Canberra is mainly a city of civil servants and administrators. There are plenty of service industries – especially ones aimed at feeding and watering all those politicians and visitors – but little real industrial activity. Canberra gained self-government in 1989, with only the Parliamentary Triangle – the area bounded by Commonwealth Avenue, Kings Avenue and Lake Burley Griffin – remaining under federal control; the self-financing responsibilities that this entails have placed a premium on tourism revenues. And indeed, the main reason to come to Canberra is for the national mus-eums and institutions you can visit – top of the list is the National Gallery, and the stunning New Parliament House, opened in 1988 and certainly one of the principal tourist sights, with its original architecture intended to blend into the landscape. Canberra is also trying very hard to present an image to counter its reputation as the domain of dull bureaucrats. It hasn't succeeded yet: most Australians still regard Canberra as "pollie city" – a frosty, boring place where politicians and public servants live it up at the expense of the hard-done-by Australian taxpayer. They also complain about its concentric circular streets, which can make driving here seem like a Kafkaesque nightmare, and about the contrived, neat-as-a-pin nature of the place.

But the image-makers have a point, and Canberra is a far more pleasant place than it's usually given credit for. The city has wide open spaces and many parks and gardens, with the impressive architecture housing the national institutions set in astonishingly well-groomed surroundings, so that you can pad barefoot through the grass from the National Gallery to the National Library, peacefully admiring the gum trees. Right on its doorstep are forests and bushland, with unspoilt wilderness just a bit further afield in the Brindabella Ranges and the Namadgi National Park; skiing in the Snowy Mountains or surfing on the coast are only a few hours away. Sadly, in late 2002, this natural bush setting, combined with extreme drought conditions, precipitated Canberra's worst bushfires for fifty years. The area to the west of the city was hardest hit. Mount Stromlo Observatory was completely gutted and in all over five hundred homes were destroyed and four residents were left dead. Remarkably, though the CBD was covered in a pall of smoke for several weeks, none of its buildings was damaged by the fires.

Canberra's nightlife is also a great deal better than you might expect considering its reputation, in term time at least: the two universities here (and the Duntroon Military Academy for officer material) mean there's a large and lively student population (good news for those who have student cards, as most attractions offer hefty discounts). The city is said to have more restaurants per capita than any other in Australia – which is saying something – and there are plenty of pubs and nightclubs to choose from, too. Many of them, though, are tucked away in hidden corners of the city or in the satellite towns. Surprisingly perhaps, Canberra also holds the dubious title of Australia's porn capital, due to its liberal licensing laws, which legalize and regulate the sex industry.