The Hyde Parks Barracks Museum is housed in the original Barracks, used during the colony period to house convicts, whom worked on many of the early settlement's earliest infrastructure projects. Experience how convicts lived during the time.

The Hyde Park Barracks Museum offers a unique insight into Australia’s convict past. Commissioned by Governor Lachlan Macquarie, the Hyde Park Barracks were built by convicts for convicts between 1817-1819.

Designed by convict architect Francis Greenway, who received his absolute pardon for the successful completion of the Barracks, it remained in use until the end of transportation 1848.

The building itself has been in use for 190 years, beginning as convict barracks, later becoming an immigration depot and a destitute women's asylum. The Barracks were also used later as government offices and law courts, today it is a museum.

At the barracks you can lie in hammocks that are identical to those used by the convicts who were here from 1819-1848 and use the touch screen database to search over 15,000 names of people who were inmates at the Barracks.

The Hyde Park Barracks Museum is located right next to Hyde Park at the top of Macquarie St and is open 7 days a week, from 9.30am to 5pm.