A delicate shade of duck egg blue was eventually overlaid with a light green; a photo from 1938 shows the Sturt Street facade as a pinkish white.

Its current owner says layer after layer of paint was stripped from the cast-iron railings and columns during the most recent restorations (which, he says, have taken much longer than hoped).

"Every time a royal visitor arrived, from the 1860s onwards, there would be another coat of paint added to brighten it up - and it was always red, white and blue."

Considering how many royal visits Ballarat has hosted, that's quite a few coats.

The Unicorn is one of Ballarat's earliest hotels, built of brick at a time when canvas and timber was the material usually chosen. Its first owner and publican Charles Vaughan obviously knew what he was onto, for the site of the pub - the corner of Lydiard and Sturt streets - was the financial heart of Ballarat at the time.

The 'Corner' as it was simply known, grew to become the focus of gold trading in Ballarat. For a time the mining exchange was next door to the Unicorn, wedged in between it and the new Ballaarat Miners' Institute.

Men would swarm over the area on trading days, and no doubt the ownership of the Unicorn was a lucrative and busy enterprise. The since-demolished rear of the Unicorn held a series of small shops for a time, where stock agents plied their trade to the besuited, bewhiskered, benevolent grandees of the growing city.

Some of the more famous Ballarat names to have held the licence or owned the Unicorn include Kirk, Beacham and Honan. Beachams had the hotel from 1916; Ellen Beacham was offering billiards and a fine dining room in what was once the 'Call Room' of the Exchange.

The hotel was popularly used for meetings by both Ballarat football clubs and the various mens' lodges in the city.

The famous Unicorn statue which stood on the parapet of the hotel and can be seen in many photographs is still the subject of much speculation in Ballarat. It appears in early pictures of the pub and then disappears, only to reappear later, and then vanish once more. It would appear there have been at least two or perhaps three versions of the statue, with one of those being more of a bas-relief than a fully-moulded sculpture, and another possibly just cut from tin sheeting.

The rear of the hotel covered the Unicorn mine, which had operated on the site until the late 1860s, meaning the hotel was extended after that. The Unicorn shaft was 160 feet deep and runs down into the Golden Point lead which traverses Ballarat.

According to the Institute of Mineralogy, in February 1868 a Henry Williams was killed in the mine and Wiliam Hockey was seriously injured, when the bucket Williams was riding in fell to the bottom of the shaft.

The manager, James Vowles, was charged with neglect causing death. Hockey (who later died from his injuries) stated at a bedside court hearing the mine manager was not at fault.

However, the only compensation either the Hockey or Williams families were likely to receive was a one off donation from the company, which it was not legally obliged to provide, and this may have influenced the comments.

The mine was uncovered in 1925 when sewage works were undertaken within the hotel.

The Unicorn was cut into a smaller hotel shops sometime in the 1940s, the hotel itself closed in 1973. It is being sold by Colliers International.