Chinatown Archway

The Chinatown Archway spans the entrance to Little Bourke Street, defined by its traditional pailou design and vibrant imperial gold tiling. Melbourne commissioned the structure in two thousand and ten to honor the continuous presence of Chinese residents in the district since the gold rush of the eighteen fifties. When construction workers dug the foundations, they unearthed a collection of nineteenth-century medicine bottles and opium pipes. These fragments remain embedded within the concrete, physically anchoring the modern steel arch to the buried layers of Chinatown.