Explore WA Museum Boola Bardip across two intersecting visitor loops, including eight permanent galleries, the City Room, the 1,000-square-metre special exhibition space, heritage buildings, the café, and all transit entrances at Perth's Cultural Centre. The museum's two-loop layout (one vertical, one horizontal) is designed to let visitors choose their own journey rather than follow a linear sequence.

Use the map to locate a specific gallery, find the café, or identify the nearest train entrance before you arrive.

About WA Museum Boola Bardip

WA Museum Boola Bardip is the state museum of Western Australia, located at the Perth Cultural Centre in Perth's CBD. Boola Bardip means "many stories" in the Whadjuk Noongar language, the traditional language of the Noongar people — the original custodians of the country on which the museum stands.

The museum traces its origins to 1891, when the Old Perth Gaol was converted into a geological museum. After four years of construction, the redeveloped museum reopened on 21 November 2020, designed by an international consortium of Hassell and OMA architects at a cost of approximately $400 million.

The redesigned building tripled the museum's footprint and received the George Temple Poole Award in 2021, alongside multiple other Australian Institute of Architects awards. The building envelopes five heritage-listed structures, including the Old Perth Gaol, the Jubilee Building, Hackett Hall, and the original Art Gallery building, weaving them into a new structure organised around two intersecting circulation loops.

Eight permanent galleries span 6,000 square metres, covering Western Australia's natural and social history across three themes: the diversity of the West Australian people, the state's landscape, and Western Australia's role in the world. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives are present in every gallery, developed in consultation with more than 60 language groups across the state. A separate 1,000-square-metre special exhibition gallery hosts major national and international touring shows.

The museum is located at the Perth Cultural Centre, a short 200-metre walk from Perth train station (served by the Armadale, Fremantle, Yanchep, Mandurah, and Midland lines), making it one of the most transit-accessible cultural institutions in Western Australia.

Standard general admission to the permanent galleries is $15 for adults and $10 for concessions, while children 15 and under can enter for free.

Why interactive wayfinding matters here

WA Museum Boola Bardip's architecture is its most celebrated feature and its most unusual navigation challenge. The museum is built around two intersecting loops that wrap around five heritage buildings of different heights, scales, and connections.

Unlike a conventional gallery with numbered rooms in a linear sequence, Boola Bardip is designed so visitors can choose their own path through the building. That freedom is intentional; the disorientation it creates for first-time visitors is not.

A searchable interactive map that shows each gallery's location within the loop structure turns the museum's architectural complexity into an asset rather than a friction point.