Former name | Museum of City & Sea |
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Established | 1972 |
Location | Wellington Harbour Board Head Office and Bond Store,3 Jervois Quay, Queens Wharf, Wellington, New Zealand |
Website | museumswellington.org.nz |
Wellington Museum (formerly the Museum of City & Sea) is a museum on Queens Wharf in Wellington, New Zealand. It occupies the 1892 Bond Store, a historic building on Jervois Quay on the waterfront of Wellington Harbour. In 2013, it was voted by The Times as one of the world's 50 best museums.[1]
The museum has four floors covering the history of Wellington. Celebrating the city's maritime history, early Māori and European settlement, and the growth of the region, the museum seeks to tell Wellington's stories and how the city has evolved over its 150 years as capital of New Zealand. A giant cinema screen stretching between the ground, first and second floors shows a series of films about Wellington. There are three theatre areas: one tells Māori legends using a pepper's ghost, the other is a memorial to the sinking of the Wahine ferry in Wellington harbour and located on the top floor a Wellington Time Machine.[2] A new exhibition space, The Attic, opened in late 2015 after extensive refurbishment and restoration to the top floor.[3][4]