Explore Honolulu

Kawaiahaʻo Church in downtown Honolulu was built in 1836–1842 from about 14,000 blocks of coral cut from the reefs, to a design by the missionary Hiram Bingham. Hawaiian monarchs worshipped and were crowned here, and the tomb of King Lunalilo stands in the churchyard. The Congregational church still holds Sunday services, partly in Hawaiian.

ʻIolani Palace in downtown Honolulu was built in 1879–1882 for King Kalākaua and was the official residence of the last two monarchs of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi. After the overthrow of 1893, Queen Liliʻuokalani was held prisoner in an upstairs room in 1895. Restored as a museum, it shows the throne room, state rooms and royal apartments.

Aliʻiōlani Hale, completed in 1874 opposite ʻIolani Palace, was the government building of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi and now houses the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court. Inside, the King Kamehameha V Judiciary History Center explains the islands' legal history. In front stands the gilded statue of Kamehameha I by Thomas Gould, draped in flower lei on 11 June.

The Hawaii State Capitol, completed in 1969 behind ʻIolani Palace, was designed by John Carl Warnecke with Belt, Lemmon & Lo to evoke the islands. The two legislative chambers are cone-shaped like volcanoes, the columns recall palm trees, and a reflecting pool surrounds the building like the ocean. Its central courtyard is open to the sky.

The Honolulu Museum of Art opened in 1927 as the Honolulu Academy of Arts, founded by Anna Rice Cooke. Its low white building on Beretania Street, designed by Bertram Goodhue's firm, is arranged around open courtyards. The collection of some 50,000 works ranges from Asian art, including Japanese woodblock prints, to European and American painting and Hawaiian art.

Aloha Tower is a clock tower and lighthouse on Pier 9 of Honolulu Harbor, opened in 1926 to guide ships into port; its four clock faces carry the word ALOHA. Rising about 56 m over ten storeys, it was long the tallest building in Hawaiʻi. The tower stands within the Aloha Tower Marketplace, whose waterfront walk is open to visitors.

Foster Botanical Garden, on the edge of Honolulu's Chinatown, grew from trees planted in 1853 by the German physician William Hillebrand. Mary Foster left the grounds to the city, and the garden opened in 1931. Its 5.7 hectares hold towering tropical trees, palms, orchids, a butterfly garden and a collection of plants used by early Hawaiians.

The National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific lies inside Punchbowl Crater, Puowaina, an extinct volcanic cone above downtown Honolulu. Opened in 1949, it is the resting place of service members of the Second World War, Korea and Vietnam. The Honolulu Memorial's Courts of the Missing list the names of those never found, among them 18,095 missing of the Second World War.

Bishop Museum was founded in 1889 by Charles Reed Bishop in memory of his wife, Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, the last heir of the royal Kamehameha line. In its lava-stone Hawaiian Hall of 1903, feather cloaks, carvings and royal heirlooms tell the history of Hawaiʻi and the Pacific. The campus also has a planetarium and a science centre.

Waikīkī Beach is the run of sandy beaches along Honolulu's south shore, about 3 km long between the Ala Wai harbour and Kapiʻolani Park, with Diamond Head at its eastern end. Hotels such as the Moana of 1901 line the sand. Its gentle reef breaks are where many people learn to surf, and outrigger canoes take visitors out onto the waves.

Honolulu Zoo lies in Queen Kapiʻolani Park at the Diamond Head end of Waikīkī. It opened in 1914 and covers about 17 hectares. Its zones show animals of the African savanna, of tropical forests in Asia and the Americas, and of the Pacific islands, among them the nēnē, the Hawaiian goose that is the state bird. Keepers give talks through the day.

The Waikīkī Aquarium, founded in 1904, stands on the shore of Kapiʻolani Park beside a living reef and has been run by the University of Hawaiʻi since 1919. Its galleries show the reef fish, corals, jellyfish and giant clams of Hawaiʻi and the tropical Pacific, and an outdoor habitat keeps Hawaiian monk seals.

Diamond Head, Lēʻahi in Hawaiian, is a volcanic tuff cone on the southeast edge of Waikīkī, formed about 300,000 years ago. A trail built in 1908 for the Army's coastal defences climbs from the crater floor through a tunnel and up steep stairs to the summit bunkers, about 170 m higher, with views over Waikīkī and Honolulu. Entry is by reservation.

The Nuʻuanu Pali Lookout stands about 370 m up on the cliffs of the Koʻolau range, at the head of Nuʻuanu Valley some 8 km from downtown Honolulu. Below it spread the windward coast, Kāneʻohe and Kailua. In 1795 Kamehameha I's warriors drove Oʻahu's defenders over these cliffs, a decisive battle in the uniting of the islands. Winds here are often very strong.

The national memorial commemorates the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor of 7 December 1941, in which more than 2,400 Americans were killed. Its visitor center holds two museums on the road to war and the attack. A Navy boat takes visitors to the USS Arizona Memorial, built in 1962 over the sunken battleship where most of her crew still lie.

The Pacific Fleet Submarine Museum stands beside the Pearl Harbor Visitor Center. Its centrepiece is USS Bowfin, a Balao-class submarine launched on 7 December 1942, one year after the attack, which made nine war patrols in the Pacific. Visitors climb through the boat's compartments and see the museum's displays on a century of American submarines.

The battleship USS Missouri, launched in 1944, is moored as a museum ship on Ford Island in Pearl Harbor. Japan's formal surrender ending the Second World War was signed on her deck in Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945. Visitors walk the decks, the surrender site and the crew's quarters; a shuttle runs from the Pearl Harbor Visitor Center.

The aviation museum occupies Hangars 37 and 79 on Ford Island, two seaplane hangars that survived the attack of 7 December 1941; the windows of Hangar 79 still show bullet holes. Opened in 2006, it displays aircraft from the Second World War to the Cold War beside the restored red-and-white Ford Island control tower.

The Byodo-In Temple in Kāneʻohe, at the foot of the Koʻolau cliffs about 15 km from downtown Honolulu, is a smaller-scale copy of the 11th-century Byōdō-in in Uji, Japan. It was built in 1968 to mark 100 years of Japanese immigration to Hawaiʻi. The red hall houses a large gilded Amida Buddha, and the grounds have a koi pond and a bronze bell.