Three days in Christchurch: a cathedral made of cardboard, and a city still deciding what to be

Two nights on the Canterbury plains: a tram loop through a rebuilt centre, punts on the Avon, an art gallery that spent five years as an emergency headquarters, and penguins beside the runway.

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Length
3 days, 2 nights
Where you stay
Christchurch
Places
7 across 3 days
OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles Data from OpenStreetMap

Christchurch was laid out in 1850 by settlers who intended a slice of England in the South Pacific: a cathedral in a square, a river called the Avon with willows on it, a grid of streets named after English bishoprics, and punts. For a hundred and sixty years it delivered exactly that, and visitors described it as the most English city outside England, usually approvingly.

Then on 22 February 2011 an earthquake directly under the city killed 185 people and destroyed most of the centre. Around eighty per cent of the buildings inside the four avenues came down or were demolished afterwards. What has gone up in their place is nothing like what was there: low, wide, bright, full of gaps and murals and container bars, with a paper and cardboard cathedral standing in for the Gothic one that is still in pieces fifteen years later.

Three days is right. Two of them work the centre and the park, and the last one goes to the edge of town, where the country's Antarctic programme has been based since Scott sailed from Lyttelton in 1901.

Highlights

  • A working cathedral built from cardboard tubes, designed to last twenty years
  • 185 white chairs, every one a different shape, for every person the quake killed
  • A punt on the Avon under the willows, poled by a man in a boater
  • One hundred and ninety hectares of park a two minute walk from the main square
  • A wind chill room set to minus eighteen, with a storm on the hour

Where to stay

Christchurch, two nights inside the four avenues

Stay inside the central grid, near the square or towards the park. The whole centre is about a kilometre and a half across and the tram loop passes most of the hotels.

The eastern end, around the pastel shopping terrace and the container mall, is where the rebuilt city feels most alive at night. The western side towards the botanic gardens is quieter and greener and about ten minutes' walk from everything.

Day by day

Day 1 in Christchurch

A tram loop, a paper cathedral and 185 empty chairs

Get on the tram first. It runs a fifty minute loop through the middle of the city on a day ticket, you can get on and off, and on a first afternoon it does the one thing a map cannot: it shows you which parts of Christchurch are old, which are new, and which are still holes in the ground.

Get off for the Transitional Cathedral. When the Gothic one in the square was wrecked, the diocese asked the Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, who has spent his career building emergency structures out of paper, to design a replacement. He gave them a triangular building of ninety eight cardboard tubes, each six hundred millimetres across, under a polycarbonate roof, with a triangular stained glass window at the front reworked from the old cathedral's rose. It opened in August 2013, it was meant to last twenty years, and it is still doing the job.

Two minutes away is a memorial that has no official standing at all. An artist put out 185 white chairs on a cleared site, one for every person who died, each a different chair: a wheelchair, a baby seat, an armchair, a bar stool. It was supposed to be temporary and the city would not let it go.

Finish along the river at the national memorial, a curved wall of Italian marble on the bank with the names cut into it.

  1. 14:00

    Tram ride

    Visit

    A fifty minute loop of the central city on a heritage tram, hop on and hop off all day. Buy the ticket at the Worcester Street office or on board. The best possible first hour here.

  2. 15:45

    Cardboard Cathedral

    Religious

    Shigeru Ban's triangular cathedral of cardboard tubes, opened in 2013 to replace the ruined Gothic one and still in weekly use. Free to enter, a donation asked. Twenty minutes, and go inside rather than photographing the front.

  3. 16:45

    Canterbury Earthquake National Memorial

    Historic

    A curved marble wall on the north bank of the Avon carrying the 185 names, with a walkway along the river behind it. Free, open, and quiet even in the middle of the day.

  4. 18:30

    Dinner on the pastel terrace

    Eat

    A curved run of Spanish Mission shopfronts from 1932, painted in sherbet colours, which survived when almost nothing around it did. The tram runs down the middle. Book in summer.

With more time: The ruin of the old cathedral is still standing in the square behind a fence, and the argument about whether to rebuild or replace it ran for the best part of a decade before reinstatement won. Walk past it. It is the clearest single thing in the city about how long this has taken.

Day 2 in Christchurch

The Avon, the gardens and the gallery

Christchurch calls itself the Garden City and for once the nickname is earned. Hagley Park and the botanic gardens together run to about a hundred and ninety hectares immediately west of the centre, which is close to the size of a small suburb, and the Avon loops through the middle of it.

Start on the water. Punts leave from the Antigua Boat Sheds, a green and white timber building from 1882 at the southern corner of the park, and they are exactly what they sound like: flat bottomed boats poled from the stern by somebody in a striped blazer and a boater. The trip is half an hour under willows and past lawns and it is unapologetically silly.

Then walk into the botanic gardens, which fill the bend the river makes, with glasshouses, a rose garden, a herbaceous border and enormous exotic trees put in during the 1860s.

In the afternoon come back into town for the art gallery. It is the largest in the South Island, it is free, and its history says a good deal about the place: after the earthquake it spent five years as the civil defence headquarters, with the emergency operation run out of the exhibition halls, before finally reopening as a gallery again at the end of 2015.

  1. 10:00

    Punting on the Avon

    Visit

    Half an hour on the Avon in a flat bottomed punt, poled by a boatman in a striped blazer, leaving from the 1882 boat sheds at the corner of the park. There is a discount if you buy it with the tram pass.

  2. 11:00

    Christchurch Botanic Gardens

    Nature

    Thirty hectares wrapped in the Avon, joined to 160 more of open park, and free. Glasshouses, roses and a herbaceous border. The visitor centre cafe is a good lunch stop.

  3. 13:00

    Lunch in the park

    Eat

    The cafe at the gardens visitor centre, or the row of places along Worcester Boulevard on the way back into town. Both are five minutes from the gallery.

  4. 14:00

    Christchurch Art Gallery

    Culture

    Free, the largest gallery in the South Island, and a wave of glass on the corner. It served as the civil defence headquarters for five years after the earthquake before reopening in December 2015. They will store your suitcase at reception.

With more time: The Gothic Revival stone quadrangle across the road from the gallery was the old university and is now a cultural centre, repaired over a decade at enormous cost. The Great Hall and the small physics exhibition in Rutherford's Den, where the man who split the atom studied, are both open and cost little or nothing.

Day 3 in Christchurch

Antarctica, on the way to the airport

Christchurch has been the jumping-off point for Antarctica since the heroic age, and it still is: the American, New Zealand and Italian programmes all fly south from here, and the ice runway is about eight hours away on a military transport.

The visitor centre for that operation is beside the airport, which makes it the obvious last morning. There is a storm room chilled to minus eighteen with a wind machine that runs on the hour, an articulated tracked vehicle that takes passengers over a course of pits and slopes outside, a colony of little blue penguins rescued from injury, and a serious set of exhibits on what the science bases actually do.

It is a two hour visit, it is aimed at families without being childish, and the terminal is four minutes away when you are done.

  1. 09:30

    International Antarctic Centre

    Other

    Beside the airport, with a wind chill room at minus eighteen, a Hagglund ride over a rough course, rescued little blue penguins, and exhibits on the Antarctic bases. Two hours, and they will hold your luggage.

  2. 12:30

    Lunch before the flight

    Eat

    There is a cafe on site and the terminal is a four minute drive. If you are collecting a car to drive south instead, the depots are in the same block.

With more time: With a whole day instead of a morning, take the gondola up the Port Hills on the other side of town: ten minutes in a cabin to a ridge above the crater rim, with Lyttelton harbour on one side and the whole plain running to the Alps on the other. A shuttle runs from Cathedral Square in summer.

Before you go

Getting in and getting around

Christchurch Airport is twelve kilometres north west of the centre and is the South Island's main gateway, with flights from Auckland, Wellington, Queenstown, Dunedin and across the Tasman. A bus runs into town in half an hour and a taxi takes twenty minutes. Flying here is usually a good deal cheaper than flying to Queenstown, which is worth checking before you book a South Island trip.

The centre is flat, small and easy to walk. Buses run from a modern interchange in the middle of town and the heritage tram loops the central sights on a day ticket, which is a tourist service rather than transport and is genuinely useful for a first afternoon.

This is where most people collect a hire car before driving south, and there is no reason to have one before your last day in town.

The earthquake, and how to talk about it

You will see it everywhere: empty lots used as car parks, buildings braced with steel, murals on the exposed side walls of the survivors, and a memorial wall along the river. Fifteen years on the rebuild is still not finished and the Anglican cathedral in the square is still a ruin behind a fence, which locals will have a strong opinion about if you ask.

It is not a taboo subject and people talk about it readily, but it killed 185 people in a city of 350,000 and almost everybody here lost somebody or knows a family that did. Ask about it and then listen rather than comparing notes.

When to go, and the nor'wester

December to March is warm, dry and long-evening bright, and Christchurch is one of the sunniest cities in the country. Winter is cold by New Zealand standards, with frosts and the odd snowfall, and it is the season for the ski fields inland.

The local weather feature is the nor'wester, a hot dry wind that comes over the Southern Alps and can push the temperature up ten degrees in an hour while giving everybody a headache. It arrives with a distinctive arch of cloud over the mountains, and the locals blame it for everything.

September and October bring the gardens into flower, which in the self-declared Garden City is not a small thing.

Christchurch is the only city in New Zealand you visit partly to see what happened to it. That sounds grim and mostly is not: the centre is now low, sunlit and full of new buildings by people who were told to try something, and there is a paper cathedral holding services in it.

The English city the settlers built is still there in the willows, the punts and the street names. What sits between them is newer and less sure of itself, and three days is enough to see both at once.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is three days enough for Christchurch?
It is about right. The centre and the park take two comfortable days and the Antarctic centre fills a last morning on the way out. If you have a fourth day, spend it at Akaroa rather than in the city.
What is at Akaroa?
A French settlement from 1840 in a drowned volcanic crater ninety minutes south east, with a harbour full of Hector's dolphins, the smallest and rarest marine dolphin in the world. Boat trips run all year. It is the best day trip from Christchurch and needs a car or a coach.
Can I still see the old cathedral?
Only from behind a fence. It was wrecked in 2011, sat untouched for years while the city argued about demolition, and reinstatement finally began in 2018 on a timeline measured in decades. The cardboard replacement two streets away is where services happen.
Should I fly into Christchurch or Queenstown?
Christchurch, usually. It is cheaper, it has far more flights, and it is the natural start of a South Island drive. Queenstown makes sense only if you are going straight to the mountains and back.
Do I need a car here?
Not for these three days. The tram, the park and the memorials are all walkable, and there are buses to the airport and the Port Hills. Pick a car up on the last day if you are driving south.