The coastline of South Australia was first explored by the Dutch in 1627, but it was not until more than 200 years later that the foundations for a colony were laid with proposals by the British to sell land to free settlers.
As the new colony was named after Queen Adelaide, the wife of King William IV of Great Britain, this alone made Adelaide different from other Australian cities, which had first been settled by convicts.
Colonel William Light was the man responsible for the design of Adelaide in an area which until the arrival of the European settlers had been occupied by the Kaurna people, who numbered only a couple of hundred.
South Australia, of which Adelaide became the state capital after the formation of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901, is the driest state of Australia and the harsh conditions made for a difficult start for the early settlers.
The colony, which offered settlers civil and religious liberty, prevailed though and the discovery of copper in the region over the next decade or so helped Adelaide to grow and attract more Europeans to its shores.
Towards the end of the 19th century South Australia created its own piece of history when, in 1895, the state became the first in the world to allow women to stand for Parliament. The University of Adelaide was also the first to admit women for degrees.
Adelaide, whose Central Market dates back to 1869, witnessed a building boom in the early 20th Century with large numbers of migrants, many of them Italians, arriving after World War Two.