It lies at the foot of the Rock and Pillar Range of hills in the broad Strath-Taieri valley, through which flows the middle reaches of the Taieri River.

Since local government reorganisation in the late 1980s, Middlemarch and much of the Strath-Taieri has been administered as part of Dunedin city, the centre of which lies some 80 km to the southeast.

Middlemarch is part of the Taieri electorate (formerly known as Dunedin South),[4] and is currently represented in parliament by Ingrid Leary.

A description of 1903, that "[T]he summer seasons are warm, but not enervating, and the winters cold, but dry" is still true today.

[5] It is a crucial service town for the local farming community, the terminus of the Taieri Gorge Railway, and the start of the Otago Central Rail Trail.

[7][8] Another is that the name is from the now obsolete English term "march" meaning a boundary - in this case a middle area between two rivers.