Shrine of Remembrance

This is one of the most ingenious pieces of architecture in Australia, and the reason why has nothing to do with how it looks. Inside the sanctuary, there is a marble Stone of Remembrance engraved with the words from the Gospel of John: Greater love hath no man. Once a year, at exactly eleven a.m. on the eleventh of November, a ray of sunlight shines through a carefully positioned aperture in the roof and illuminates precisely one word on that stone: Love. The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. The exact moment the Armistice ended World War One.

The architects Philip Hudson and James Wardrop designed this optical effect into the building from the very beginning. It is not an accident. It is not a later addition. The entire building was oriented and the aperture was placed so that astronomy and architecture would align on that one sacred moment each year. Here is the catch, though. When Victoria introduced daylight saving, the sun was suddenly in the wrong place at eleven a.m. So they installed a mirror to redirect the sunlight and preserve the effect. During the rest of the year, an artificial light demonstrates it every half hour.

The Shrine was built between nineteen twenty-eight and nineteen thirty-four, modelled on the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It was designed as a memorial for the men and women of Victoria who served in World War One, but it has since expanded to honour all Australians who served in all conflicts. The building sits on an elevated position in Kings Domain, deliberately placed so that it commands a clear view down Swanston Street to the city. That sightline is heritage-protected. No building can ever block the view from the Shrine to the city.