About Te Papa Museum
Māori name & meaning: Te Papa Tongarewa – Container of treasures.
Inside Te Papa Museum, New Zealand unfolds through treasured objects, powerful personal stories and immersive exhibitions. Māori knowledge sits alongside Pacific cultures, national history, art and the natural world, revealing a country shaped by extraordinary landscapes and the many people who call them home.
The Story of This Place
Te Papa Museum grew from New Zealand’s earlier national museum and art gallery, with roots reaching back to the Colonial Museum established in Wellington in 1865. By the 1980s, a new museum was needed to better reflect the country’s diverse people and bring its national collections together. The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa was established by legislation in 1992, and its present waterfront home opened on 14 February 1998.
Cultural Significance
Te Papa is founded on a partnership between tangata whenua, Māori as the Indigenous people of New Zealand, and tangata Tiriti, people whose place here is connected to the Treaty of Waitangi. Māori knowledge, histories and treasured objects are presented as living parts of New Zealand’s identity, while the museum also provides space for Pacific cultures and the country’s wider communities to share their stories.
Te Papa’s marae, or communal meeting place, is named Rongomaraeroa after a place in the heavens where Māori gods are said to meet peacefully and resolve important matters. Designed as a meeting place for all New Zealanders, it represents protection, welcome and the country’s bicultural identity.
The Experience of Visiting
Visitors explore Te Papa at their own pace, moving between exhibitions dedicated to Māori and Pacific cultures, New Zealand history, art and the natural environment. The museum combines treasured objects with personal stories and interactive experiences, from encountering the world’s only colossal squid on public display to learning how earthquakes have shaped life in New Zealand.
Natural Features
Te Papa reveals why New Zealand’s natural world is so unusual, from giant flightless moa and ancient tuatara to native birds found nowhere else. Interactive exhibits explore the volcanic and seismic forces beneath the country, while science and mātauranga Māori, or Māori knowledge, come together to explain how its wildlife evolved and how these natural treasures are being protected.
Good to Know
- Te Papa opened on Wellington’s waterfront on 14 February 1998, welcoming 35,000 visitors on its opening day and more than two million during its first year.
- Today, the museum cares for more than two million objects spanning art, natural history, New Zealand histories, Māori knowledge and Pacific cultures.
Little-Known Facts
Te Papa holds an iguanodontid tooth that is 132 to 137 million years old and was among the earliest fossils recognised as belonging to a dinosaur. Its discovery helped shape the beginnings of dinosaur studies, and it has been connected with the museum’s collections since the Colonial Museum opened in 1865.
Most visitors never realise they are standing on one of New Zealand’s greatest engineering feats. The building sits on 152 lead-rubber base isolators that let it move safely in an earthquake – a home-grown invention now used in quake-prone buildings worldwide. You can see them in the Quake Braker exhibition below the museum.
Visitors can experience simulated shaking inside the Earthquake House, offering a memorable sense of how earthquakes can feel.
One Thing to Know
Te Papa presents New Zealand’s stories through both Māori and wider national perspectives, bringing culture, history, art and the natural world into conversation.