Christchurch’s Rebuilt City Centre

Why it matters

For a century and a half the centre of Christchurch looked like an English cathedral town: stone Gothic buildings, a spire in the square, a river under willows. Two earthquakes ended that. The first, on 4 September 2010, damaged the city and killed no one. The second struck close to the city at 12.51pm on 22 February 2011, and 185 people died. One hundred and fifteen of them were in a single office building, the CTV building, and 18 in another.

The ground itself failed. Much of Christchurch stands on wet silt and sand, and violent shaking turned it to liquid. Grey mud boiled up through streets and gardens, and buildings sank and tilted as it gave way. The word for it is liquefaction, and it explains why so much that was still standing had to come down.

The centre stayed behind a cordon for more than two years, and demolition crews took down most of its buildings. What to put in their place was decided quickly and argued over for a decade. The government released its plan, known as the Blueprint, in July 2012. It set out a smaller, lower centre framed by green space, with a set of large public projects to anchor it.

What the city chose

The boldest choice was the river. A promenade now follows the Avon through the centre, from the hospital to Fitzgerald Avenue. The council counts 34 artworks along it and puts its cost at $120 million. Terraced steps, opened in 2016, run down to the water. The other large projects followed one by one: the central library, Tūranga, in 2018; the convention centre, Te Pae, at the end of 2021; and the covered stadium, Te Kaha, in March 2026.

Downstream, the change is larger still. After the earthquakes the government bought out and cleared more than 600 hectares of housing along the lower river, because the land could not be trusted. That land is now the Ōtākaro Avon River Corridor, being returned to wetland, forest and trail.

Fifteen years, in order

Whose story it is

People who lived through it will tell you the rebuild has been slow, contested and unfinished, and that it is theirs. A visitor does well to remember all four. You will see empty lots between the new buildings, and a cathedral still fenced fifteen years on. You will also see a national memorial set in the open, beside the river, where everyone walks.

What it’s like

The walk runs west to east, and it is flat all the way. Begin at the Arts Centre, the stone buildings of the old university, restored after the earthquakes and open again as galleries, shops and cafés. A block east is the Christchurch Art Gallery, a glass building that served as the emergency headquarters after the 2011 earthquake and housed recovery workers until that August. It reopened in December 2015 and is free.

From there, turn towards the river. The Bridge of Remembrance, a stone arch of 1924, is a war memorial. Engineers repaired it after the earthquakes, and the city rededicated it on 25 April 2016. The river promenade runs past it, and a short walk along the south bank brings you to the earthquake memorial.

Oi Manawa, the Canterbury Earthquake National Memorial, opened on 22 February 2017, six years to the day. Ngāi Tahu gifted its name, which means a tremor or quivering of the heart. A curved wall of marble, 111 metres long, carries the names of all 185 people, each in English and in the person’s own language, arranged as their families asked. On the north bank, facing it, is a small park with trees and seats.

What writers and artists have made of it

The rebuilt centre was shaped by artists as much as engineers. The Slovenian architect Grega Vezjak designed the memorial; his was chosen from more than 330 entries. The Cardboard Cathedral is the work of the Japanese architect Shigeru Ban. Underfoot along the river are Ngā Whāriki Manaaki, paving patterns based on woven mats, designed by the Ngāi Tahu weavers Reihana Parata and Morehu Flutey-Henare. The city’s writers were given a trail of their own from 1997: 32 plaques set in the footpath at 16 sites, for Ngaio Marsh, Allen Curnow, Margaret Mahy and others. The leaflet that maps it dates from 2002, before the earthquakes, and we could not confirm how many of the plaques survived the rebuild.

North of the memorial, on Durham Street, is Quake City, the museum’s account of the earthquakes. It shows what liquefaction did to the ground, holds the fallen spire of the cathedral, and lets survivors and rescuers tell it in their own words. We would not skip it: it explains the rest.

Then the square. Christ Church Cathedral stands at its centre behind hoardings, its spire gone. On the north side is Tūranga, the new central library, with roof terraces and upper floors that look out towards the mountains and Banks Peninsula. A short walk north-east is New Regent Street, a single block of pastel shopfronts from the early 1930s in the Spanish Mission style, closed to cars, with the tram running down the middle.

A few blocks north of the square, the river bends through Victoria Square, the old market place of the city, where more of the woven-mat paving is set. Further along the same bank is the Margaret Mahy Family Playground, opened in 2015, free, and named for one of New Zealand’s best-loved children’s writers. If you are walking with children, it is the stop made for them.

One stop is missing. For eleven years an artwork called 185 Empty Chairs stood on a vacant lot near here: 185 white chairs, no two alike, one for each person who died. The artist, Peter Majendie, made it as a temporary piece. It became, he has said, a place where people came with losses of their own. Its site was sold, and on 1 April 2023 he invited the public to take the chairs home. Older guides still list it.

The walk ends in the east, at Latimer Square. The Transitional Cathedral, known to everyone as the Cardboard Cathedral, stands at the square’s southern end: an A-frame of cardboard tubes over a base of shipping containers. It is a working church, the home of the cathedral’s congregation while the old building waits. One block south, at the corner of Cashel and Madras Streets, is the site of the CTV building. It is now a small garden of cherry and kōwhai trees around the building’s remaining slabs.

How to visit

Where to start

Every stop lies within about a kilometre and a half, on flat ground. Start at the Arts Centre, 2 Worcester Boulevard, and work east, or do it in reverse from Latimer Square. Cathedral Square is the midpoint, and the tram stops there.

Without the map: the Arts Centre is at the western end of Worcester Boulevard. The memorial is on the river south of there, near the Bridge of Remembrance on Cashel Street. Quake City is on Durham Street North at Armagh Street. Tūranga faces the square. New Regent Street runs between Gloucester and Armagh Streets, and the Cardboard Cathedral is at 234 Hereford Street.

The stops

At the memorials

The memorial wall and the CTV site are open to everyone, and we found no visitor rules for either in the official sources. They are also places of mourning. Our advice is simple: read the names, keep your voice down, and do not pose for photographs at the wall or in the garden.

By tram, or with a guide

The heritage tram makes a loop of about 50 minutes through the centre, with 18 stops, every 10 to 20 minutes. A ticket costs $42 for an adult and lasts all day, so you can ride between stops and walk the rest. It passes the Arts Centre, the square and New Regent Street. It runs from 8.30am to 6.30pm in summer and 9am to 5pm in winter.

Volunteer guides from Walk Christchurch lead walks daily from the Clock Tower at the Arts Centre. Their site did not give a price or a length when we read it, so ask when you book. For a first visit with little time, a guided walk is the quickest way to understand what you are looking at.

If walking is hard

The whole route is flat and paved, and the tram covers the western half of it seated. The memorial wall is at river level, reached by the promenade. We could not confirm step-free access at every stop, so ask Quake City and the Cardboard Cathedral before you go if it matters to you.

Food and facilities

You are never far from lunch. Riverside Market and the restaurants of the Terrace are on the river near the Bridge of Remembrance, and New Regent Street is lined with cafés; our guide to eating in Christchurch covers them. Tūranga, the Art Gallery and the Arts Centre all have toilets and somewhere to sit.

Making the most of it

Half a day is enough to walk it. These choices decide how much of it you take in.

Nearby

The walk begins at the gate of the city’s other great sight. Our guide to the Botanic Gardens, Hagley Park and the Avon covers the gardens across Rolleston Avenue from the Arts Centre. It also covers the punts, which leave from the Antigua Boat Sheds, a few minutes upstream of the memorial.

For the city as a whole, start with our Christchurch guide, which also covers where to stay. And when you are ready to leave town, our day trips from Christchurch compares the best days out.