Paddington Reservoir Gardens

This place looks like you have stumbled into ancient Roman ruins, but it is actually a water reservoir from the eighteen-sixties that collapsed, sat derelict for two decades, and was reborn as a sunken garden. The brick columns and timber beams you see are original infrastructure -- this is what Sydney's Victorian water system looked like from the inside.

The reservoir was built between eighteen sixty-four and eighteen sixty-six as part of Sydney's third water supply system, receiving water pumped all the way from Lord's Dam at Botany Bay. It was decommissioned in eighteen ninety-nine -- after just thirty-five years of use -- and then had a bizarre second life as a garage and mechanical workshop for decades. In nineteen-ninety, the roof collapsed. The whole thing sat as a fenced-off ruin for nearly twenty years, slowly being reclaimed by weeds and graffiti artists.

Then in two thousand and nine, it was transformed into what you see now. The designers kept the original brick pillars and timber structure, let plants cascade through the gaps, and created a sunken garden that has been compared to the Baths of Caracalla in Rome and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. That might be a stretch. But it genuinely does feel like stepping into another era.

Here is a nice detail: the eastern chamber still has preserved graffiti from its years of abandonment. Rather than cleaning it off, the designers kept it as part of the space's history. The layers are the whole point -- Victorian engineering, industrial decay, street art, and lush new growth all coexisting in one sunken room.

The gardens won the Australian Award for Urban Design in two thousand and nine. Most tourists on Oxford Street walk right over it without knowing it is there, one level below the footpath.