Map of Melbourne, VIC 3000

Melbourne ( MEL-bərn, locally [ˈmæɫbən] ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: Narrm or Naarm) is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second most-populous city in Australia, after Sydney. The city's name generally refers to a 804 km2 (310 sq mi) area, comprising an urban agglomeration of 16 local government areas. The name is also used to specifically refer to the local government area named City of Melbourne, whose area is centred on the Melbourne central business district and some immediate surrounds.

The metropolis occupies much of the northern and eastern coastlines of Port Phillip Bay. As of 2023, the population of the metropolitan area was 5.2 million, or 19% of the population of Australia; inhabitants are referred to as "Melburnians".

The area of Melbourne has been home to Aboriginal Victorians for over 40,000 years and serves as an important meeting place for local Kulin nation clans. Of the five peoples of the Kulin nation, the traditional custodians of the land encompassing Melbourne are the Boonwurrung, Woiwurrung and the Wurundjeri peoples. In 1803, a short-lived British penal settlement was established at Port Phillip, then part of the Colony of New South Wales. Melbourne was founded in 1835 with the arrival of free settlers from Van Diemen's Land (modern-day Tasmania). It was incorporated as a Crown settlement in 1837, and named after the then-Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne. Declared a city by Queen Victoria in 1847, it became the capital of the newly separated Colony of Victoria in 1851. During the 1850s Victorian gold rush, the city entered a lengthy boom period that, by the late 1880s, had transformed it into Australia's, and one of the world's, largest and wealthiest metropolises.