The National Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa, is located on Wellington’s waterfront.  Here you can explore the world of Maori as tangata whenua or ‘people of the land.’   See New Zealand through the eyes of the first settlers of Aotearoa New Zealand, visit a Marae (a communal, sacred meeting place) and learn about our history, our unique flora and fauna and the forces which have shaped our cultural and physical landscape.

Fast Facts:

· The museum’s full name is Te Papa Tongarewa which literally means ‘container of treasures’
· Te Papa took 4 years to complete: weighs 64,000 tonnes; has 36,000 square metres of public floor space (the size of three rugby fields); includes 80,000 cubic metres of concrete; has enough reinforcing steel to stretch from Wellington to Sydney; sits on 150 shock absorbers to protect the building from earthquake movement and is clad in 14,500 grey and yellow stone panels.
· Te Papa’s interactive collections span five areas: Art, History, Pacific, Māori, and Natural Environment.
· The collections house more than 200,000 objects – from specimens gathered during Captain Cook’s first expedition to New Zealand in 1769-1770 to the costume worn by Xena: Warrior Princess.