Auckland Highlights
A curated tour of Auckland's volcanic cones, harbourfront, and Hauraki Gulf islands.
Trip Stops
- 1
Perched atop a dormant volcano in the Auckland Domain, this neoclassical museum holds the world's largest Māori and Pacific artefact collections. It also safeguards the personal archive of Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to summit Everest.
📍 Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
- 2
New Zealand's oldest purpose-built art gallery, opened in 1888 and later crowned World Building of the Year in 2013. Visitors enter beneath a canopy of carved kauri columns representing the sky father and earth mother of Māori cosmology.
📍 Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
- 3
At 328 metres, this is the tallest freestanding structure in the Southern Hemisphere and the second-tallest in the world after Jakarta's Autograph Tower. Thrill-seekers can step onto glass floor panels or leap off on the SkyJump, a guided-cable jump reaching 85 km/h.
📍 Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
- 4
Once a run-down commercial basin, this marina precinct was reborn as the venue for the 2000 America's Cup. Today it's lined with superyachts, waterfront bars, and restaurants right beside the CBD.
📍 Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
- 5
This 1912 Edwardian Baroque landmark was modelled closely on San Francisco's Ferry Building and still anchors Auckland's ferry network today. It's the launch point for harbour cruises and trips out to the Hauraki Gulf islands.
📍 Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
- 6
The youngest and largest of Auckland's roughly 50 volcanoes, this symmetrical cone erupted from the sea floor as recently as 1500 CE. A short ferry ride from downtown leads to a hardened lava-field summit walk with sweeping views back over the city.
📍 Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
- 7
This volcanic headland, known to Māori as Maungauika, was riddled with tunnels and gun emplacements in the 1880s over fears of a Russian invasion that never came. A quick ferry hop from the city, it now offers coastal walks and harbour panoramas instead.
📍 Devonport, Auckland, New Zealand
- 8
Built inside disused sewage tanks in 1985, this was the world's first aquarium with a curved acrylic viewing tunnel and moving walkway. It's now home to the only sub-Antarctic penguin colony in New Zealand.
📍 Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
- 9
The highest natural point on the Auckland isthmus, this dormant volcano's 50-metre-deep crater was carved by the same eruption that shaped the city beneath it. Its stone summit platform was famously built with help from an elephant gifted to a visiting Prince Alfred in the 1870s.
📍 Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
- 10
Once the largest Māori pā on the Auckland isthmus, this 182-metre volcanic cone sits inside Cornwall Park, gifted to the city by Sir John Logan Campbell in 1901. Its famous single tree was felled in protest in 1994, but the summit obelisk and 360-degree views remain.
📍 Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
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