Melbourne's best weekend events: markets, galleries and sport

Melbourne's reputation for weekend culture is well-earned. The city rewards those who get off the main boulevards and into the laneways, markets, and neighbourhoods that constitute the real Melbourne experience.

Queen Victoria Market

QVM on Saturday morning is one of Melbourne's great sensory experiences. The fresh produce hall, the deli sheds, and the general merchandise section combine to create something that modern retail simply cannot replicate. Go early, go hungry, and give yourself at least two hours.

National Gallery of Victoria

The NGV International on St Kilda Road houses Australia's largest and most comprehensive art collection, with free entry to the permanent collection and special exhibitions that attract blockbuster audiences. The NGV's Ian Potter Centre at Federation Square focuses on Australian art and is equally essential.

Fitzroy and Collingwood

These adjacent inner-north neighbourhoods represent Melbourne at its most creative and unpretentious. Smith Street's restaurants and bars, the vintage stores on Johnston Street, and the galleries tucked into converted warehouses on back streets are a full afternoon in themselves.

Dandenong Ranges

An hour from the city, the Dandenong Ranges offer the complete contrast, towering mountain ash forests, the heritage Puffing Billy railway, and the tea houses and garden cafes that have been drawing Melburnians to the hills for more than a century.

AFL at the MCG

If there's a game on, go. The MCG experience, the noise, the crowd, the scale of Australia's most famous stadium, is one of the defining cultural experiences available anywhere in the country, regardless of which teams are playing.