Fitzroy & Collingwood, properly.

Fitzroy was Melbourne's first suburb, and it has spent a hundred and seventy years refusing to settle down. Workers' cottages, then rooming houses, then artists who came for the cheap rent, then everyone who came for the artists. Collingwood, one street east, ran the same story on factory floors instead of terraces — the old boot factories and breweries along Smith Street and down the hill toward the Yarra are now studios, taprooms and places that roast coffee with the seriousness other cities reserve for wine.

Before any of that, this is Wurundjeri Country, and Gertrude Street carries the deepest layer of the story: through the middle of the twentieth century it was the heart of Melbourne's Aboriginal community — social life, activism and self-determination, including the founding of the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service here in 1973, with the Builders Arms among its gathering places. The street's restaurants and galleries sit on top of that history, not instead of it.

The result is a square kilometre where a two-hundred-year-old pub shares a corner with a record store, a gallery that opens when it feels like it, and a bakery people queue for in the rain. It is gentrified, obviously — locals will tell you it was better before you got there, and they were told the same thing when they arrived. The complaining is part of the culture. So is the fact that it's still, somehow, the most interesting walk in Melbourne.

Morningbelongs to coffee, and the inner north takes it personally — this is one of the neighbourhoods that built Melbourne's reputation cup by cup. Pick a roaster on Brunswick or Smith Street, order a flat white, and don't ask for it extra hot. Then walk: the terraces along the side streets are best in morning light, and the pace of the place hasn't woken up yet.

Afternoon is for the layer underneath the cafés — the galleries on and around Gertrude Street, the record crates on Smith, the vintage racks on Brunswick. None of it requires a plan. The whole point of the inner north is that the distance between any two interesting things is about ninety seconds on foot. When your legs give out, Edinburgh Gardensat the top of Fitzroy is where the neighbourhood goes to lie down — on a sunny Sunday it is half of Melbourne's twenty-somethings, a hundred dogs, and someone practising the trumpet just far enough away to be charming.

Evening works in sequence. A drink somewhere small on Gertrude — The Everleigh upstairs does cocktails with the patience of another era — then dinner wherever the walk takes you, then one more on Smith Street where the night is still going. Collingwood's old brewery blocks pour some of the city's best beer if cocktails aren't your speed, and Black Pearl on Brunswick has been the late-night safe pair of hands for two decades.

The tram 86 runs from Bourke Street in the CBD straight up Smith Street; the 11does the same up Brunswick Street from Collins. Ten minutes from town, no parking misery, and the walk between the two strips is five minutes through the prettiest backstreets in Melbourne. Weeknights are calmer and better for dinner conversation; Friday and Saturday nights are the full theatre. Sunday is Edinburgh Gardens, the Rose Street market, and a long lunch that doesn't check its watch.

Before you go:the Rose Street market only runs on weekends, so don't build a Tuesday around it. The galleries keep artist hours — most rest early in the week, so check before making one the centrepiece of a Monday. And the popular dinner rooms on Gertrude book out, especially late in the week; reserve ahead for the occasion spots, walk in for the pubs.