Christchurch keeps its past in layers: moa-hunter ovens dug from a Redcliffs sea cave, Ngāi Tahu kāinga on Whakaraupō, Gothic stone reassembled block by numbered block, and a limestone wall naming the 185 lost in 2011.
Six hectares of 600-year-old kahikatea forest that Ngāi Tahu knew as Pūtaringamotu, now ringed by a predator fence. Beside it stands Deans Cottage, built 1843 — the oldest surviving building on the Canterbury Plains.
Opened 1990 on the eastern edge of the city, this is the national marae — carved to represent all iwi rather than a single hapū. Guided visits cover pōwhiri protocol, the wharenui carvings and Ngāi Tahu's land losses after 1848.
A sea cave at the foot of the Redcliffs bluff where Julius von Haast excavated in 1872 and pulled out moa bones, cooking ovens and adzes — hard proof of moa-hunter occupation from roughly 1250 AD. Interpretation panels stand at the fence.
A bayside kāinga on Whakaraupō, named when the chief Te Rakiwhakaputa laid his rāpaki — his waist mat — on the beach to claim the land in the 1830s. The 1869 whare karakia and the wharenui Wheke sit above the tideline.
The Canterbury Museum's earthquake gallery: carved stones from the toppled cathedral spire, buckled seismograph traces from the Lyttelton fault, and filmed testimony from 22 February 2011, when 185 people died inside 24 seconds.
Gothic Revival stone quadrangles raised from 1877 for Canterbury College, including the shed where Ernest Rutherford ran his first experiments. Twenty-three buildings were taken apart and rebuilt stone by numbered stone after 2011.
Set on the 1923 Wigram airfield, the museum holds 28 aircraft, from a Bristol Freighter and a Mosquito to an A-4 Skyhawk, plus the wartime training records of the men who flew from these very hangars.
The 1924 triumphal arch spans the Ōtākaro at the point where troops marched from King Edward Barracks to the Lyttelton trains and on to Gallipoli. Two blocks northeast stands the 1937 Citizens' War Memorial in Cathedral Square.
From 1876 the ball dropped at 1pm so ships in Whakaraupō could set their chronometers — one of only five working timeballs left worldwide. The 2011 quakes flattened the tower; it was rebuilt from its own salvaged, numbered stones.
The port town lost half its Victorian frontages in 2011, but the 1874 Coffee Company block, the Harbour Light theatre and the Empire Hotel survive. Scott and Shackleton loaded their Antarctic expeditions at these wharves.
A working Edwardian township across 40 hectares, built beside the route of New Zealand's first public railway (Ferrymead to Christchurch, 1863). Operating trams and trolleybuses, a printworks, a gasworks and a gas-lit church.
A 100-metre curve of Ōamaru limestone along the Ōtākaro, carrying the names of all 185 people killed in 2011. The name means 'tremor of the heart'; the site was chosen where the river bank itself liquefied.