Furnished Townhousesin Fitzroy.

“Fitzroy invented inner-city Melbourne, then sold it back.”

Fitzroy is Melbourne's oldest suburb and one of Australia's clearest examples of post-industrial inner-city gentrification. Sitting 2km north of the CBD, the suburb is built around three north–south streets — Brunswick, Smith and Gertrude — that between them concentrate Melbourne's most dense cluster of independent retail, cafés, restaurants and bars. Brunswick Street in particular has been the home of the city's bohemian and design scene for forty years, and the suburb retains a strong creative identity even as housing prices have priced out most of the original artists. Demographics are now heavily professional: design and architecture studios, advertising agencies, software engineers from nearby Carlton tech employers, post-graduate students at the University of Melbourne, and a long-running queer community concentrated around Smith Street. Housing stock is dominated by Victorian and Edwardian terraces (often subdivided into apartments), warehouse conversions in the post-industrial pockets along Smith Street, and a small number of newer apartments around the Edinburgh Gardens. Walk Score is among Melbourne's highest. Trams 11, 86 and 96 run frequently along Brunswick, Smith and Nicholson Streets respectively, putting the CBD 15–20 minutes away. The 96 also runs to St Kilda Beach. Typical furnished tenants include designers, architects, software engineers and copywriters at the surrounding agencies, post-graduate humanities students at UoM, returning expats sampling Melbourne, and creative-industry contractors on 3–6 month projects. For renters comparing inner-north options, the close alternatives are Collingwood (more warehouse character, cheaper), Carlton (more student-academic) and North Fitzroy (quieter, more residential, slightly cheaper for terrace stock). Fitzroy is a particularly strong fit for relocators who want walkable urban density without the higher-rise CBD apartment style.