The Brunswick Street Bookstore

In true Fitzroy style, The Brunswick Street Bookstore is sandwiched between an Italian cafe and Vietnamese restaurant and sits on a footpath packed with foot traffic. By the time you get through the front door, you'll be desperate for peace and silence, which is exactly what this dreamy bookstore dishes up. It began trading in 1987, pre-Fitzroy renaissance, making it an artefact of a time before Brunswick Street was a trendy, slick hotspot. Despite the changing times, its reputation prevails as a bookstore that riles against the mainstream and stocks a huge selection of non-fiction titles, concentrating on history, politics, biography, science, literature and cultural studies instead. The top floor is devoted to visual arts, and fittingly, was designed by Melbourne architect Peter Brew.