Te Papa
New Zealand's national museum, and the most complete colossal squid ever landed.
Duration
2 hrs 30 min – 4 hrs
Best time
At opening
Open
Every day
Entry price
Free
Te Papa Tongarewa, 'the place of the treasures of this land', opened in 1998 and it is free. It is built on seismic base isolators: a hundred and forty-two rubber and lead bearings let the building move thirty centimetres during an earthquake — Wellington sits on a fault.
Its best-known exhibit is the colossal squid, brought up alive in 2007 by a trawler in the Ross Sea: four hundred and ninety-five kilos, the most complete specimen ever preserved. The Gallipoli exhibition, with its human figures at two-and-a-half scale made by Weta Workshop, is the other.
Getting there
Cable Street, on the waterfront, fifteen minutes on foot from the centre. Free entry.
Rules on site
Entry is free but some temporary exhibitions are ticketed. The museum is large: pick two or three floors — it does not get done in one visit.