Federation Square sits at the symbolic heart of Melbourne, straddling the corner of Swanston and Flinders streets opposite the golden dome of Flinders Street Station. It opened in 2002 after a troubled gestation: the site was nearly developed in the 1970s as a pair of giant breasts (no, really), a state design competition in 1978 went nowhere, and the eventual winning design blew its $110 million budget out to $467 million. Many Melburnians hated it on sight.

They came around. The jagged, zinc-and-glass geometry of "Fed Square," built over old railway yards, now draws yoga practitioners, free exhibitions at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, and anyone who simply wants to sit on steps that are, by universal agreement, too low and uncomfortable.

VoiceMap's tours use Federation Square to trace Melbourne's long rivalry with Sydney, its reinvention from rail yards to civic icon, and its instinct for the gloriously impractical.