Explore Auckland

Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki opened in 1888 as New Zealand's first permanent public art gallery, in a château-style building with a clock tower below Albert Park. A new wing with timber-lined canopies, opened in 2011, doubled its space. The collection covers New Zealand and Māori art, Pacific works and international painting and sculpture.

St Patrick's Cathedral, formally the Cathedral of St Patrick and St Joseph, is the mother church of the Catholic Diocese of Auckland, on Wyndham Street in the city centre. The brick Gothic Revival church was built in 1884–85 and 1906–07 to designs from Edward Mahoney's firm, on land Bishop Pompallier acquired in 1841, and is the oldest Catholic cathedral in New Zealand.

The Auckland Domain is a 75-hectare park in Grafton, laid out from 1843 and the oldest in the city, filling the explosion crater and tuff ring of the Pukekawa volcano. The Auckland War Memorial Museum stands on the crater rim, sports fields cover its floor, and the Domain Wintergardens with two glasshouses, a fernery in an old quarry and the duck ponds lie on the north side.

Holy Trinity Cathedral on Parnell Road is the seat of the Anglican Bishop of Auckland. Its foundation stone was laid in 1957, the chancel was consecrated in 1973, and the Bishop Selwyn Chapel completed the building in 2017; the nave holds a large expanse of stained glass. Beside it stands St Mary's, a wooden Gothic Revival church by Benjamin Mountfort completed in 1897.

The Auckland Harbour Bridge carries State Highway 1 across the Waitematā Harbour between St Marys Bay and Northcote. The steel truss bridge opened in 1959 with four lanes, and two cantilevered lanes were added on each side in 1969; it is 1,020 metres long, with a main span rising 43 metres above high water. It has no footpath, and is seen from Westhaven and Northcote Point.

Maungawhau / Mount Eden is a 196-metre scoria cone, the highest volcano on the Auckland isthmus, last erupting about 28,000 years ago. Terraces and storage pits of a large Māori pā mark its slopes, and a path circles the 50-metre-deep crater, Te Kapua kai a Mataoho. The summit, with views over the city, has been closed to private vehicles since 2016.

Cornwall Park in Epsom was given to the people of Auckland by John Logan Campbell in 1901 and, with the adjoining Maungakiekie / One Tree Hill Domain, forms about 270 hectares of parkland. Tree-lined avenues and a working farm with sheep and cattle lead up to the summit of Maungakiekie, a volcanic cone and former pā crowned by an obelisk.

Rangitoto Island is the youngest volcano of the Auckland volcanic field, formed in eruptions around 1450 and 1500 CE, and rises 260 metres above the Hauraki Gulf. Ferries from downtown Auckland reach Rangitoto Wharf, from where tracks cross bare lava fields and a large pōhutukawa forest to the summit crater and to lava caves.