Papeete's history runs in three layers: basalt marae raised by chiefly clans, the 1797 missionary landing and Pomare dynasty that followed, and the French protectorate imposed by force in 1846. All three are walkable or a short drive from Bld Pomare.
The only fully restored marae on Tahiti, rebuilt in 1954: black basalt walls, a stepped ahu platform and carved tiki lining a lawn between cliffs. Open daily 08:00–17:00, 22 km south of Papeete, no entry fee.
A coastal marae complex excavated and cleared in the 1970s, its stone platforms scattered through purau trees behind the lagoon. Far less groomed than Arahurahu — you walk on the raw coral-slab paving used by priests before 1815.
Three lava-carved grottoes at the roadside in Paea, where a fern-hung freshwater pool sits beneath a 30-metre overhang. Tahitian tradition holds the caves as a refuge and burial place; Pierre Loti swam here in 1872 and wrote it up.
The wreck of Tahiti's greatest monument: an eleven-step pyramid marae raised around 1767 for the chiefess Purea and measured by Cook's officers. Quarried for a bridge in the 1860s, it survives as a coral rubble mound on the black-sand shore.
The coral-block mausoleum of Tahiti's last sovereign, who signed the kingdom over to France in 1880 and died in 1891. It is crowned by a Grecian urn that locals maintain is a Benedictine liqueur bottle, matching his reputation.
The rebuilt hillside home of the American who co-wrote Mutiny on the Bounty. His library of 3,000 books, typewriter and letters remain as he left them; Hall settled in Tahiti in 1920 and died here in 1951.
Cook anchored here in 1769 to observe the transit of Venus, Bligh watered the Bounty in 1788, and the first London Missionary Society party landed in 1797. Stone monuments and the 1867 lighthouse stand on the black-sand point.
Consecrated in 1875 and the oldest surviving building in the city centre. Its paintings of a Polynesian Christ and Tahitian-language liturgy show exactly how Catholic mission art was localised after the 1842 protectorate.
The French built this stone fort after storming the gorge in December 1846 to break the last Tahitian resistance. Ramparts, powder magazine and cannon platforms survive on the ridge above a 300-metre waterfall, reached by a steep valley trail.
The freshwater pool where Pierre Loti swam with Rarahu in 1872, now marked by his bronze bust at the mouth of the Fautaua valley. The ruined stone pump house beside it served Papeete's first municipal waterworks.
Tahiti's Chinese community arrived in 1865 as indentured labour for the Atimaono cotton plantation. The Kanti de Mamao temple honours Guan Yu on a site used since the 1890s, and the streets around it keep the old family shopfronts.
A shaded strip named for the 1768 navigator and guarded by two naval guns: one from the French gunboat Zélée, scuttled when German cruisers shelled Papeete in September 1914, the other salvaged from the raider Seeadler.