A beacon of culture and delight, the excellent Dowse is worth visiting for its jaunty architecture alone. It’s a family-friendly, accessible art museum showcasing NZ art, craft and design, with a good cafe to boot. The only permanent showcase is a carved Māori pataka (traditional raised storehouse). It's a 20-minute drive, 30-minute ride on bus 83 or 91, or a short train trip from central Wellington.
Dowse Art Museum
Wellington
Lonely Planet's must-see attractions
8.29 MILES
For an imaginative, interactive experience of Wellington’s social and maritime history, head to this bewitching little museum, inside an 1892 bond store…
9.56 MILES
This groundbreaking ecosanctuary is nooked into a valley in the hills about 2km west of downtown Wellington. Living wild within the fenced, predator-free…
8.68 MILES
These hilly, 25-hectare botanic gardens can be effortlessly visited via the Wellington Cable Car (nice bit of planning, eh?), although there are several…
8.22 MILES
The city's most impressive viewpoint is atop 196m-high Mt Victoria (Matairangi), east of the city centre. You can take bus 20 most of the way up, but the…
8.36 MILES
New Zealand's national museum is hard to miss, taking up a sizeable chunk of the Wellington waterfront. ‘Te Papa Tongarewa’ loosely translates as …
7.74 MILES
Academy Award–winning special-effects and props company Weta Workshop has been responsible for bringing the likes of The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit,…
8.05 MILES
New Zealand might be a young country but it has one of the oldest continuously functioning parliaments in the world and has chalked up more than its share…
8.47 MILES
Housed in the monumental old library in Civic Sq (the new library is next door), Wellington’s much-loved City Gallery does a cracking job of securing…
Nearby Wellington attractions
1.74 MILES
Built for the centenary of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1940, this gorgeous little art-deco building on the shell-strewn Petone foreshore contains a fun and…
2. Katherine Mansfield House & Garden
7.63 MILES
Often compared to Chekhov and Maupassant, Katherine Mansfield was one of NZ’s most distinguished authors, who pushed the short-story form to uncharted…
7.74 MILES
Academy Award–winning special-effects and props company Weta Workshop has been responsible for bringing the likes of The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit,…
7.84 MILES
Designed by Rev Fred Thatcher, the first vicar of Wellington, this wonderfully woody former Anglican cathedral (1866) is well worth a look. Despite its…
7.94 MILES
Ngā Taonga is a vortex of NZ moving images into which you could get sucked for days. Its library holds tens of thousands of titles: feature films,…
6. National Library of New Zealand
7.95 MILES
As well as being a wonderful resource for researchers, the National Library has various exhibition spaces including the Turnbull Gallery, displaying rare…
7. Wellington Cathedral of St Paul
7.98 MILES
At 88m long and 18m high, this modern Anglican cathedral exudes quasi-Moorish architectural vibes inside its lofty interiors. It first opened its doors in…
8.05 MILES
New Zealand might be a young country but it has one of the oldest continuously functioning parliaments in the world and has chalked up more than its share…