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.

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.

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.

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.