St Paul's Cathedral, Anglican cathedral in City of Melbourne, Australia.
St Paul's Cathedral is an Anglican cathedral at the corner of Swanston and Flinders streets in central Melbourne, Australia. It is built of honey-brown sandstone in the Gothic Revival style, with a facade of three spires: a taller central spire flanked by two lower ones, each topped with a cross. Inside, a high timber roof rests on pointed arches, walls alternate bands of light sandstone and dark bluestone, and a mosaic of gold, red and blue panels fills the far wall above a raised platform.
Construction began in 1880 following a design by architect William Butterfield, who proposed a Gothic Revival form with detailed stonework. The spires were completed only between 1926 and 1932, finishing the appearance of the cathedral more than five decades after the foundation was laid.
The building serves the Anglican community as a center for worship and sacred music, with a professional choir supporting the liturgy. Visitors can experience how this choral tradition fills the church interior with multi-part harmonies, especially during the regular evening prayers on weekdays.
The cathedral stands on the eastern corner of Swanston and Flinders streets, diagonally opposite Flinders Street station, with Federation Square across Flinders Street to the south. The interior is entered from the Great West door, where a glass-walled airlock was installed in 2009. The building is oriented north–south along the city grid rather than east, so the main entrance faces west.
The central tower, named the Moorhouse Spire, reached its full height of 312 ft (95 m) in 1932, and a thanksgiving service followed on 30 April 1933. It made St Paul's the tallest structure in central Melbourne and dominated views from the south until later high-rises rose.
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