This museum is huge. Te Papa Tongarewa means “Our Place”, and is one of the largest national museums in the world, the equivalent space to three football fields.
The exhibitions are spread over 5 floors, but we mainly concentrated on floor 4 which housed the Te Marea (the meeting house) exhibition. This was an actual Maori meeting house where weddings and ceremonies are held. There were wooden carvings of people doing a range of different occupations around the outside. There was also an example of a Maori ceremonial boat and works of art and treasures. There was a unique 21st century carved meeting house where we had to take off of our shoes before we could go inside.
There was a section on Pacific Islander people, and their history. We went into an exhibit set out like a shop with articles from history, pre-war and up to date. We sat down and were treated to a 15 minute film of New Zealand’s history with archive footage of events through their history.
There was an impressive natural history section with lots of skeletons of whales, dolphins and seals. There was also an exhibit of a Colossal Squid, the only one on display in the world. They had a video of how it was brought up by a fishing ship in the Antarctic. It’s eyeball was the size of a football.
check out www.tepapa.govt.nz
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