The Rocks

The Rocks is located at the northern part of the Sydney CBD occupying the peninsula between Circular Quay and Sydney Harbour Bridge and is the place where the first European settlers came ashore in 1788.

In The Rocks, the Authority owns and maintains 95 heritage buildings, manages 291 retail and commercial tenants as well as stallholders of The Rocks Markets and 27 residential tenants.

The Rocks is a retail precinct containing numerous shops, restaurants, pubs, museums and hotels for which the Authority is the landlord and centre manager. It is also a business precinct with a large number of commercial businesses operating under lease from the Authority.

The Authority also provides tenant services including daily cleaning activities throughout managed buildings, public spaces and public amenities, 24-hour ranger security services and best practice landscaping work in parks and gardens.

The Authority is committed to protecting and enhancing the unique heritage of The Rocks while ensuring it is a vibrant place offering a diversity of experiences for the more than 14 million people who visit the precinct each year*.

With a growing residential population and an increasing workforce, The Rocks is changing from a tourist destination to an intimate village with a new relevance to locals and Sydneysiders as a whole.

The Rocks also hosts a number of annual free events including Australia Day and the Aroma Festival - for more information check out What's on in The Rocks.

*How visitors are counted
Electronic people counters are installed in key locations in Darling Harbour and The Rocks. The counters emit an infrared beam and each time a pedestrian breaks the beam a people movement is registered. Calibration and expansion calculations are applied to raw counts to ensure that final figures estimate total pedestrian flow into a precinct. These figures do include repeat visits made by visitors, workers and residents.

Last update: Monday 01 August 2011