operated from the premises since 1949.

Hobart has a growing street art scene thanks to a program called Hobart Walls, which was launched in association with the Vibrance Festival, an annual mural-painting event. The City of Hobart and Vibrance Festival launched Hobart's first legal street art wall in Bidencopes Lane in 2018, allowing any artist to paint there, on any day of the week, provided they sign up for a permit and paint between 9 am and 10 pm.

Designed by the prolific architect Sir Roy Grounds, the 17-storey Wrest Point Hotel Casino in Sandy Bay, opened as Australia's first legal casino in 1973.

The city's nightlife primarily revolves around Salamanca Place, the waterfront area, Elizabeth St in North Hobart and Sandy Bay, but popular pubs, bars and nightclubs exist around the city as well. Major national and international music events are usually held at the Derwent Entertainment Centre, or the Casino. Popular restaurant strips include Elizabeth Street in North Hobart, and Salamanca Place near the waterfront. These include numerous ethnic restaurants including Chinese, Thai, Greek, Pakistani, Italian, Indian and Mexican. The major shopping street in the CBD is Elizabeth Street, with the pedestrianised Elizabeth Mall and the General Post Office.

Close Shave, one of Australia's longest serving male a cappella quartets, is based in Hobart.

Events

Hobart is internationally famous among the yachting community as the finish of the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race which starts in Sydney on Boxing Day (the day after Christmas Day). The arrival of the yachts is celebrated as part of the Hobart Summer Festival, a food and wine festival beginning just after Christmas and ending in mid-January. The Taste of Tasmania is a major part of the festival, where locals and visitors can taste fine local and international food and wine.

The city is the finishing point of the Targa Tasmania rally car event, which has been held annually in April since 1991.

The annual Tulip Festival at the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens is a popular Spring celebration in the city.

The Australian Wooden Boat Festival is a biennial event held in Hobart celebrating wooden boats. It is held concurrently with the Royal Hobart Regatta, which began in 1830 and is therefore Tasmania's oldest surviving sporting event.

Sport

Most professional Hobart-based sports teams represent Tasmania as a whole rather than exclusively the city.

Cricket is a popular game of the city. The Tasmanian Tigers cricket team plays its home games at the Bellerive Oval on the Eastern Shore. A new team, Hobart Hurricanes represent the city in the Big Bash League. Bellerive Oval has been the breeding ground of some world class cricket players including the former Australia captain Ricky Ponting.

Despite Australian rules football's huge popularity in the state of Tasmania, the state does not have a team in the Australian Football League. However, a bid for an Tasmanian AFL team is a popular topic among football fans. The State government is one of the potential sponsors of such a team. Local domestic club football is still played. Tasmanian State League football features five clubs from Hobart, and other leagues such as Southern Football League and the Old Scholars Football Association are also played each Winter.

The city has two local rugby league football teams (Hobart Tigers and South Hobart Storm) that compete in the Tasmanian Rugby League.

Tasmania is not represented by teams in the NRL, Super Rugby, ANZ Championship or A-League. However, the Tasmania JackJumpers entered the NBL in the 2021/22 season. The Hobart Chargers also represent Hobart in the second-tier South East Australian Basketball League. Besides the bid for an AFL club which was passed over in favour of a second Queensland team, despite several major local businesses and the Premier pioneering for a club, there is also a Hobart bid for entry into the A-League.

The Tassie Tigers field men's and women's representative sides in the national hockey league, Hockey One (which replaced the Australian Hockey League in 2019). They play their home matches at the Tasmanian Hockey Centre in New Town near Cornelian Bay, which features three synthetic hockey pitches that have also hosted international competition such as the Men's FIH Pro League as recently as 2019. The Kookaburras current co-Captain and games record holder, Eddie Ockenden, is a product of the Hobart-based club North West Graduates.

The city co-hosted the basketball FIBA Oceania Championship 1975, where the Australian national basketball team won the gold medal.

Media

Five free-to-air television stations service Hobart:

ABC Tasmania (ABT)
SBS Tasmania (SBS)
Southern Cross Seven Tasmania (TNT) – Seven Network affiliate
Nine Tasmania (TVT) – Nine Network affiliate
Tasmanian Digital Television (TDT) – Network 10 affiliate
Each station broadcasts a primary channel and several multichannels.

Hobart is served by twenty-nine digital free-to-air television channels:

ABC
ABC HD (ABC broadcast in HD)
ABC TV Plus/KIDS
ABC ME
ABC News
SBS
SBS HD (SBS broadcast in HD)
SBS Viceland
SBS Viceland HD (SBS Viceland broadcast in HD)
Food Network
NITV
7 Tasmania (on relay from Melbourne)
7HD (Seven broadcast in HD)
7two
7mate
Racing.com
Nine (on relay from Melbourne)
9HD (Nine broadcast in HD)
9Gem
9Go!
9Life
TVSN
Gold
Sky News on WIN
10 (on relay from Melbourne)
10 HD (TDT broadcast in HD)
10 Bold
10 Peach
10 Shake
The majority of pay television services are provided by Foxtel via satellite, although other smaller pay television providers do service Hobart.

Commercial radio stations licensed to cover the Hobart market include Triple M Hobart, hit100.9 Hobart and 7HO FM. Local community radio stations include Christian radio station Ultra106five, Edge Radio and Hobart FM which targets the wider community with specialist programmes. The five ABC radio networks available on analogue radio broadcast to Hobart via 936 ABC Hobart, Radio National, Triple J, NewsRadio and ABC Classic FM. Hobart is also home to the video creation company Biteable.

Hobart's major newspaper is The Mercury, which was founded by John Davies in 1854 and has been continually published ever since. The paper is owned and operated by Rupert Murdoch's News Limited.

Government

Hobart is divided into five local government areas - three of which are designated as cities, City of Hobart, City of Glenorchy and City of Clarence,. The remaining metropolitan area is within the Municipality of Kingborough and the Municipality of Brighton. Each local government area has an elected council which manages functions delegated by the Tasmanian state government such as roads, planning, animal control and parks. Mains water and sewerage processing are serviced by TasWater, which is a state-wide authority part owned by the state government and local government areas.

Hobart is the seat of the Parliament of Tasmania, located at Parliament House, Salamanca Place, and the location of the official residence of the Governor of Tasmania, Government House. The senior sitting of the Supreme Court of Tasmania, and only sitting of the Court's appeal division, sit in Hobart.

Hobart was made the seat of government for the southern district of Tasmania (then called Van Diemen's Land), Buckingham County in 1804, with the northern half of the state separately governed from Port Dalrymple, now George Town. At the time, Van Diemen's Land remained part of the Colony of New South Wales. In 1812, the northern lieutenant governorship ceased and Hobart become de facto seat of government for the entire island. Hobart officially became capital of an independent colony of Van Diemen's Land in 1825, and the seat of responsible self government in 1850 with the Australian Constitutions Act 1850.

Infrastructure

Education

Hobart is home to the main campus of the University of Tasmania, located in Sandy Bay. On-site accommodation colleges include Christ College, Jane Franklin Hall and St John Fisher College. Other campuses are in Launceston and Burnie.

The Greater Hobart area contains 122 primary, secondary and pretertiary (College) schools distributed throughout Clarence, Glenorchy and Hobart City Councils and Kingborough and Brighton Municipalities. These schools are made up of a mix of public, catholic, private and independent run, with the heaviest distribution lying in the more densely populated West around the Hobart city core. TasTAFE operates a total of seven polytechnic campuses within the Greater Hobart area that provide vocational education and training.

Health
Royal Hobart Hospital is a major public hospital in central Hobart with 501 beds, which also serves as a teaching hospital for the University of Tasmania.

A private hospital, Hobart Private Hospital is located adjacent to it and operated by Australian healthcare provider Healthscope. The company also owns another hospital in the city, the St. Helen's Private Hospital, which features a mother-baby unit.

Transport

The only public transportation within the city of Hobart is via a network of Metro Tasmania buses funded by the Tasmanian Government and a small number of private bus services. Like many large Australian cities, Hobart once operated passenger tram services, a trolleybus network consisting of six routes which operated until 1968. However, the tramway closed in the early 1960s. The tracks are still visible in the older streets of Hobart.

Suburban passenger trains, run by the Tasmanian Government Railways, were closed in 1974 and the intrastate passenger service, the Tasman Limited, ceased running in 1978. Recently though there has been a push from the city, and increasingly from government, to establish a light rail network, intended to be fast, efficient, and eco-friendly, along existing tracks in a North South corridor; to help relieve the frequent jamming of traffic in Hobart CBD.

The main arterial routes within the urban area are the Brooker Highway to Glenorchy and the northern suburbs, the Tasman Bridge and Bowen Bridge across the river to Rosny and the Eastern Shore. The East Derwent Highway to Lindisfarne, Geilston Bay, and Northwards to Brighton, the South Arm Highway leading to Howrah, Rokeby, Lauderdale and Opossum Bay and the Southern Outlet south to Kingston and the D'Entrecasteaux Channel. Leaving the city, motorists can travel the Lyell Highway to the west coast, Midland Highway to Launceston and the north, Tasman Highway to the east coast, or the Huon Highway to the far south.

Ferry services from Hobart's Eastern