Free museum entry for New Zealanders and people living in New Zealand
Open every day 10am-6pm
(except Christmas Day)
Free museum entry for New Zealanders and people living in New Zealand
Te Papa is a landmark building in the heart of Wellington. It’s an engineering feat, rich with symbolism, and accessible to all.
Rongomaraeroa is a unique marae (meeting place) within Aotearoa New Zealand. Like all marae, it is founded on Māori principles of kawa (marae protocol) and tikanga (cultural practices) it was created for our unique museum context as a contemporary marae acknowledging the whakapapa (ancestral history) and the taonga (treasures) of all peoples who call Aotearoa New Zealand home.
What sets our building apart? Just how many base isolators support us? How many rugby fields could you fit inside Te Papa?
The three boulders outside the main entrance symbolise our commitment to New Zealand’s land and people.
The three main waharoa (gateways) at Te Papa are significant and special to our museum in several ways.
There are millions of stories contained within the walls of Te Papa – some of them literally! Pete Bossley, who was Design Director at Jasmax Architects when they designed and built Te Papa, takes us on a tour of the building to reveal some of the lesser-known facts.
If you have walked along Cable Street in Wellington you will have seen one of the largest artworks at Te Papa. Two stories high, and running the length of the building, the work is by the artist Milan Mrkusich (1925–2018).
The spinning ball in our entrance is the oldest material in Te Papa as the rock it’s made from is 1.4 billion years old.
A lot of work happens at our Tory Street facility including research, documentation, digitsation, curatorial authoring, and development of our taonga (treasures) knowledge of Aotearoa New Zealand.
Thu 19 May 2022
Te Papa has been allocated $42.9 million in Budget 2022 to create a new storage and research facility that will house part of New Zealand’s natural history collection.
Press release He pānui pāpāho
How did Te Papa survive the Kaikoura earthquake nearly unscathed?
In 2016 an earthquake shook Wellington awake. Out of our two million collection objects, only nine were damaged. Here, conservation intern Charlotte Jimenez explains the intricate process of restoring one of them.
Go underground to see the amazing Kiwi innovation that ‘puts the brakes on’ in an earthquake.
On now
Permanent exhibition
Exhibition Ngā whakaaturanga
The Collin Post 4 Plinths Project next to our forecourt is managed by The Wellington Sculpture Trust. The current project is Merging Blocks (2024) by Sabine Marcelis. It consists of four large boxes created out of coloured and mirrored glass, which vary in proportion and orientation.
This link will take you to The Wellington Sculpture Trust website.
