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Old Parliament House, formerly known as the Provisional Parliament House, was the seat of the Parliament of Australia from 1927 to 1988. The building was opened in 9 May 1927 as a temporary base for the Commonwealth Parliament following its relocation from Melbourne to the new capital, Canberra, until a grander building could be constructed. In 1988, the Commonwealth Parliament transferred to the new Parliament House on Capital Hill. Old Parliament House currently houses exhibitions of the National Portrait Gallery and the National Archives and serves as a venue for temporary exhibitions, lectures and concerts.

Designed by John Smith Murdoch and a team of assistants, the building was intended to be neither temporary nor permanent – only to be ‘provisional’ building that would serve as a parliament for fifty years. The design brief extended from the building to include its gardens, décor and furnishings. The building is in the ‘stripped Classical’ style, common in Australian government buildings constructed in Canberra during the 1920s and 1930s. It does not include classical architectural elements such as columns, entablatures or pediments, but does have the ordiliness and symmetry associated with neoclassical architecture. The building's design was, and is, considered a success because of the clarity of shape, regular composition, dazzling whiteness and pleasantly human scale.