Until 1897 a limestone bar across the mouth of the Swan River kept large ships out of Fremantle. Charles Yelverton O'Connor had it dredged away, and the port opened at the peak of the Western Australian gold rush. The money that came through it built most of the town centre.
That money went into hotels, banks and shipping warehouses, most of them two and three storeys on small blocks. About 250 of them are inside the West End heritage area, twenty hectares either side of . The University of Notre Dame has occupied and restored many of them since 1992.
above Bathers Beach was finished in 1831 and is the oldest intact building in the state. Convicts then built on The Terrace, which held prisoners until 1991 and went onto the World Heritage list in 2010.
Container cranes stand across the water from the timber wharf and cargo sheds on . The fishing fleet is a kilometre south in the Fishing Boat Harbour, behind a breakwater built in 1919. Many of those boats belong to families from Molfetta and Capo d'Orlando.
Away from the centre, the larger commercial buildings give way to smaller houses. has two storey terraces in limestone and red brick with iron lace balconies. , off South Terrace, has single storey cottages with corrugated roofs. has nineteenth century houses and the Fremantle Arts Centre, which convicts built in the 1860s as an asylum.
