The State Library: Melbourne's Second Reading Room

If you've already seen the La Trobe Reading Room and need more reasons to visit the State Library of Victoria on Swanston Street — the exhibition galleries on the ground floor rotate frequently and the permanent displays include Ned Kelly's armor and the original diary entries of Burke and Wills.

The Mirror of the World exhibition traces the history of books and ideas with objects spanning 4,000 years — cuneiform tablets, medieval manuscripts, early printed books. The Cowen Gallery hosts photography and contemporary art that's consistently better than you'd expect from a library.

Free, daily. The reading room gets the photos, but the ground floor galleries reward a slower visit. Coffee at the cafe, then the exhibitions, then the dome. In that order.