Christchurch: 185 Empty Chairs, a Cardboard Cathedral, and the Garden City's Unfinished Symphony

Some cities carry their scars like warning signs. Christchurch wears hers like a second skin—refusing to hide them, refusing to let them define her entirely. I arrived on a Tuesday morning in late autumn, when the Southern Hemisphere sun sat low and the light felt like honey poured over stone. The taxi driver from the airport didn't point out the new stadium rising on the edge of the central city, or the glass towers that have replaced the brick ones. He told me about the day the earth shook, about the liquefaction that bubbled up through the streets like the ground itself was trying to speak. "You'll see it," he said. "You can't not see it."

He was right. But what he didn't say—what you only understand after walking these streets for a few hours—is that Christchurch isn't a city trying to rebuild what it was. It's a city trying to figure out what it wants to become. The earthquake of February 22, 2011, killed 185 people, destroyed the city center, and left the cathedral in ruins. But it also created something rare: a blank canvas in a country not known for tearing things down. What rose from the rubble wasn't a restoration. It was a conversation.

I'm Finn O'Sullivan, and I write about places that have been broken and remade. Christchurch is the most honest city I've ever visited. It doesn't try to sell you a polished version of itself. It shows you the cracks, the unfinished walls, the empty lots where buildings used to stand—and then it shows you what people have painted on those walls, what they've built in cardboard, what they've planted in the gaps. This isn't a city that recovered. It's a city that reimagined.

The Earthquake That Rewrote a City

To understand Christchurch, you have to understand the event that split its history in two. At 12:51 PM on February 22, 2011, a magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck just 10 kilometers southeast of the city center. The ground liquefied. Buildings that had survived the larger September 2010 quake crumbled. The historic ChristChurch Cathedral lost its spire and much of its nave. The CTV Building collapsed entirely, killing 115 people. By the time the aftershocks stopped, 185 people were dead, the central business district was cordoned off, and a city founded by English settlers in 1850 found itself starting over.

The scale of destruction is hard to comprehend without seeing the empty spaces. Walk down Colombo Street or High Street today, and you'll notice how many gaps there are between buildings—parking lots where theatres once stood, construction fences where cafes used to serve flat whites. But you'll also notice the murals. The street art that has turned the city's wounds into a gallery. In 2012, local artists began painting on the walls and fences that surrounded the red zone, and what started as a way to beautify destruction became a defining cultural movement. Today, there are more than 250 street art pieces across the city, with over 50 large-scale murals in the central city alone. The largest mural in New Zealand is here, painted on the side of a building on Gloucester Street by Australian artist Guido van Helten. It depicts a Māori woman and a Pākehā woman sharing a single face, a single gaze. It's about unity. It's about looking forward.

If you want to understand the science and the story, visit Quake City at 99 Cashel Street. The museum is built in the former Christchurch Star building, and it tells the story of the earthquakes through survivor testimonies, recovered objects, and an earthquake simulator that will shake you in your seat. Entry is NZ$25 for adults, NZ$15 for students, and free for children under 15. It's open daily from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM, and you should plan for at least an hour. The most haunting exhibit is a simple one: a clock, stopped at 12:51, pulled from the rubble of a department store.

The Cardboard Cathedral: Architecture as a Love Letter to Hope

The most photographed building in Christchurch isn't made of stone. It's made of cardboard. And it's the most beautiful thing in the city.

The Transitional Cathedral—universally known as the Cardboard Cathedral—sits at 234 Hereford Street, a ten-minute walk from the central square. Designed by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban and completed in 2013, it was meant to be temporary. A placeholder while the Anglican diocese figured out what to do with the ruined ChristChurch Cathedral. But the temporary structure became so beloved, so iconic, that it has outlasted the debates about the permanent replacement. The cathedral is built from 98 cardboard tubes, each 60 centimeters in diameter, coated in waterproof polyurethane and flame-resistant. They sit within a timber A-frame, topped with a polycarbonate roof that floods the interior with light. The stained glass windows are made from colored perspex, and the effect is extraordinary: a space that feels both fragile and indestructible, like the city itself.

Shigeru Ban, who won the Pritzker Prize in 2014 and the AIA Gold Medal in 2026, is famous for using humble materials in extraordinary ways. His Voluntary Architects' Network has built emergency shelters from paper tubes in Rwanda, Ukraine, and Japan. The Christchurch cathedral was one of his few permanent structures. It cost less than NZ$6 million, took only a few months to build, and can hold 700 people. Inside, the wooden pews are simple and warm, and the space is used for concerts, services, and quiet reflection. The Anglican community still holds services here, but the building belongs to everyone.

The cathedral is open to visitors daily from roughly 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. Entry is free, though donations are welcome. If you can, visit on a Sunday morning when the choir is practicing. The acoustics are surprisingly rich, and there's something deeply moving about hearing sacred music inside a building made of paper and hope. After your visit, walk next door to the 185 Empty Chairs installation on the corner of Cashel and Madras streets. The proximity is deliberate. The cathedral and the chairs are in conversation with each other—one offering a space to gather, the other a space to mourn.

185 Empty Chairs: The Memorial That Doesn't Need Words

The official earthquake memorial opened in 2017 on the banks of the Avon River, a polished concrete wall engraved with the names of the dead. It's dignified, it's permanent, and it's not where the locals go to remember.

The memorial they go to is a patch of grass on the corner of Cashel and Madras streets, where 185 white chairs sit in rows. They are not identical. There is a baby's car seat, a rocking chair, a school stool, a wheelchair, a barber's chair, an armchair with the stuffing showing. Each one is different because each life was different. Local artist Peter Majendie installed them on the first anniversary of the earthquake, February 22, 2012, on the site of the demolished Oxford Terrace Baptist Church. They were meant to stay for a week. They have been there ever since, repainted and repaired by volunteers, added to by visitors who leave flowers, teddy bears, handwritten notes.

There are no names on the chairs. Majendie was adamant about that. "There are no chairs representing relations," he said. "They're representing absences." The installation is unfinished by design. Brian Eno's definition of installation art—that it is added to and changed by those who engage with it—applies here more than anywhere else I've seen. On Mother's Day, the chairs fill with flowers. On the anniversary, people sit silently on the bar stools, raising cans of beer in salute. The artwork has become a living thing, and the city has refused to let it be moved to a permanent site, despite Majendie's proposals. The chairs belong here, on the street, in the weather, in the life of the city.

Visit in the early morning, before the shops open, when the chairs sit in silence and the light hits the white paint at a sharp angle. It's free, it's open all hours, and it's the most emotionally honest memorial I've ever encountered. Bring tissues. Bring silence. Bring respect.

Street Art and the Painted City

If the earthquake gave Christchurch a tragedy, it also gave it an unexpected gift: walls. Hundreds of them. When the central city was fenced off for demolition, the plywood hoardings became canvases. Artists from New Zealand, Australia, and beyond came to paint, and what started as a temporary beautification project became the city's most dynamic cultural scene.

The Rise Street Art Festival in 2013-2014 brought international artists like ROA from Belgium and Natalia Rak from Poland to paint large-scale murals on the sides of buildings that had survived. The festival is long over, but the art remains, and new pieces are added every year. You can find a map of the murals at the Christchurch i-SITE Visitor Centre on Oxford Terrace, or download a self-guided trail from the Christchurch City Council website. The trail takes about two hours on foot and covers 30 of the most significant pieces.

Don't miss the Watch This Space mural on Manchester Street by Australian artist Fintan Magee, depicting a child blowing dandelion seeds across a ruined cityscape. Or the Tūī on the side of a carpark building on Lichfield Street, a hyper-realistic bird painted by local artist Wongi Wilson that seems to watch you as you walk past. Or the collaborative piece on the Justice Precinct building, where the city's legal community commissioned a mural of a Māori proverb: "He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tangata, he tangata, he tangata." What is the most important thing in the world? It is people, it is people, it is people.

The street art is more than decoration. It's a claim. A declaration that this city belongs to the people who live here, not to the developers or the politicians or the insurance companies. Every new mural is an act of reclamation. Walk the streets slowly. Look up. The buildings may be half-empty, but the walls are full.

Riverside Market and the New Food Culture

Christchurch's food scene was always good. Before the earthquake, the city had a reputation for excellent cafes and a surprisingly robust coffee culture. But the destruction of the central city forced a reinvention. The old restaurants were gone. The landlords were uncertain. The new Christchurch food scene that emerged is more democratic, more experimental, and more fun.

The best place to experience it is Riverside Market, at the corner of Cashel Street and Oxford Terrace. It's an indoor market, seven days a week, filled with food stalls, micro-restaurants, and local producers. The stalls open at 7:30 AM and close at 8:00 PM, while the upstairs restaurants serve until late. The building itself is new, a glass-and-steel structure on the riverbank, and the energy inside is high. You'll find Dimitri's Greek Food serving souvlaki and spanakopita, Base Woodfired Pizza doing Neapolitan-style pies in a 90-second bake, Shaka Bros with Hawaiian-Japanese fusion poke bowls, and Bellbird Bakery selling sourdough that rivals anything in Wellington or Melbourne. Upstairs, Midnight Shanghai is the go-to for dim sum and late-night cocktails.

For a different kind of food hall, walk ten minutes to Little High Eatery at 255 St Asaph Street. It's open daily from 11:00 AM to 10:00 PM and houses eleven local and family-run businesses under one roof. The communal seating makes it ideal for groups with conflicting cravings. The standout is Bacon Brothers, a burger joint that started as a food truck and now serves what locals argue is the best cheeseburger in the South Island. The patties are smashed, the buns are potato-based, and the bacon is thick-cut and crispy. Another favorite is Eightgrains, which does hand-pulled noodles and Sichuan-style dumplings with a Kiwi twist.

If you want a sit-down dinner with a sense of place, Dux Central on Lichfield Street is a craft brewery and restaurant housed in a restored heritage building. The beer is brewed on-site, the menu is gastropub with local ingredients, and the outdoor courtyard is one of the best places in the city to watch the light change. For something more upscale, Inati on Hereford Street is a modern New Zealand restaurant with a tasting menu that changes with the seasons. Chef Simon Levy's dishes are technical but never fussy, and the wine list focuses on Canterbury and Central Otago producers. Expect to pay NZ$120-150 per person for the full experience.

And then there's the coffee. Christchurch has become one of New Zealand's most competitive coffee cities, and the standard is ferociously high. C1 Espresso on High Street is a local institution, famous for its pneumatic tube delivery system—your food arrives in a canister shot through a network of tubes above the counter. It's gimmicky, but the coffee is serious. Unknown Chapter on Colombo Street roasts its own beans and serves a flat white that will ruin you for Starbucks forever. The Caffeine Laboratory on New Regent Street is tiny, always crowded, and worth the wait.

The Canterbury Museum and the Weight of History

Before the earthquake, the Canterbury Museum at 26 Rolleston Avenue was one of the most visited museums in New Zealand. Housed in a Benjamin Mountfort-designed Victorian Gothic building, it held collections on Māori history, Antarctic exploration, natural history, and the settler era. The building was damaged in the quakes, and in 2023 it closed for a five-year redevelopment. The collection has been moved to a pop-up museum at 66 Gloucester Street, but the original building is the one that matters.

If you're visiting while the main building is closed, the pop-up is still worth an hour. It's free, open daily from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM, and holds a rotating selection of the museum's treasures. But the real story is the building itself. Mountfort, Canterbury's most celebrated colonial architect, designed the museum in 1869. It opened in 1870 as a single room, and expanded over the decades into a labyrinth of galleries, stone staircases, and timber beams. The fact that it's being seismically strengthened and reimagined rather than demolished is a statement about Christchurch's relationship with its past. The city isn't erasing its history. It's asking what parts are worth saving, and how.

Adjacent to the museum, the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū on Worcester Boulevard is a more recent addition to the city's cultural landscape. The building, opened in 2003, was designed to withstand earthquakes, and it survived the 2011 quakes with minimal damage. The collection is strong on New Zealand art, with significant holdings of works by Colin McCahon, Rita Angus, and Bill Hammond. The gallery is free, open daily from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM, and the building itself is a work of art—a glass-and-steel structure that seems to float above the street. The rooftop terrace offers one of the best views of the city center, and the cafe is a quiet spot to read or write.

Hagley Park and the Garden City Legacy

Christchurch was founded as an English settler city, and the founders were determined to recreate the green and pleasant land they had left behind. The result is Hagley Park, a 165-hectare expanse of lawns, lakes, and specimen trees that dominates the western edge of the central city. It's one of the largest urban parks in the world, and it's been the heart of Christchurch's identity since the 1860s.

Within Hagley Park, the Christchurch Botanic Gardens are the city's most visited attraction. They are free, open daily from 7:00 AM until dusk (9:00 PM in summer, 6:30 PM in winter), and they contain ten distinct gardens, from the rose garden with over 250 varieties to the native plant collection to the historic Cuningham House glasshouse, filled with tropical plants. The gardens were first planted in 1863, and they have the feel of a place that has been tended for generations. The Peacock Fountain is a Victorian confection of colored tiles and cast iron, and the Curator's House is a charming restaurant set in a 1920s cottage.

The Ilex Café in the Visitor Centre is open from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM (4:00 PM in winter), and it's a good place to start your visit. The centre also offers guided tours, including the "Caterpillar" shuttle—a 40-minute ride with commentary that covers the highlights. The shuttle costs around NZ$30 for adults and NZ$15 for children, and it's worth it if you're short on time or mobility.

But the best way to experience the gardens is to walk. Follow the Avon River loop, where willows dip their branches into the water and ducks paddle in the eddies. In spring, the cherry blossoms and daffodils are explosive. In autumn, the oaks and maples turn the park into a painting. The gardens are a reminder that Christchurch was the "Garden City" long before it was the "Earthquake City," and that identity is still alive, still growing, still refusing to be defined by a single event.

What to Skip

The Christchurch Casino on Victoria Street is clean, modern, and completely devoid of character. It's a generic gambling hall that could be anywhere in the world, and it has nothing to do with the city around it. Skip it.

The Christchurch Gondola on the Port Hills offers panoramic views of the city and the Southern Alps, but the ride is short, the cost is steep at NZ$35 per adult, and the view is better experienced on foot via the Bridle Path walking track, which is free and takes about two hours return.

The International Antarctic Centre near the airport is popular with tour groups, but it's expensive at NZ$65 for adults, and the experience is more theme park than museum. If you're genuinely interested in Antarctic history, the Canterbury Museum's pop-up has a better collection, and the Hagley Park display on Scott's expedition is more moving.

Orana Wildlife Park is a safari-style zoo on the outskirts of the city. It's not bad, but it's not special. If you want wildlife, drive two hours to the Banks Peninsula and see penguins, seals, and dolphins in their natural habitat instead.

The Restart Mall was a beloved temporary shopping precinct made of shipping containers after the earthquake. It has since been replaced by permanent shops, and the energy that made it special is gone. The new retail strip on Cashel Street is fine for shopping, but it doesn't tell you anything about the city.

Practical Logistics

Getting There: Christchurch International Airport is 12 kilometers northwest of the city center. The Airport Shuttle costs NZ$25-30 per person and takes 30-40 minutes. A taxi or Uber is NZ$40-50 and takes 15-20 minutes. The Metro Bus number 29 runs every 15 minutes and costs NZ$4 with a Metrocard or NZ$8.50 cash.

Getting Around: The central city is compact and walkable. The Christchurch Tram is a tourist attraction rather than practical transport, but the all-day ticket at NZ$40 (NZ$10 for children 5-15) is worth it for the commentary and the hop-on-hop-off flexibility. The tram stops at 18 points including the Botanic Gardens, Riverside Market, and New Regent Street. For real public transport, the Metro bus network covers the city and suburbs. Get a Metrocard from any convenience store for NZ$5 and load it with credit; fares are roughly half the cash price.

When to Go: Christchurch has a dry, temperate climate. Summer (December-February) is warm and sunny, with temperatures in the 20s Celsius. Autumn (March-May) is crisp and golden, with less wind. Winter (June-August) can be frosty and clear, with temperatures dropping to single digits. Spring (September-November) is unpredictable but beautiful when the blossoms are out. The best time to visit is March-April or October-November, when the weather is settled and the crowds are thin.

Where to Stay: For atmosphere and proximity, The Observatory Hotel on Gloucester Street is a boutique property in a restored heritage building, with rooms from NZ$180-250 per night. For budget travelers, Jucy Snooze on Manchester Street offers pod-style accommodation from NZ$50-70 per night. For something unique, The Classic Villa on Worcester Boulevard is a historic B&B with a garden and breakfast included, rooms from NZ$150-200.

Safety and Etiquette: Christchurch is one of the safest cities in New Zealand, but the usual precautions apply: don't leave valuables in parked cars, especially in the CBD. The earthquake red zone is now fully open, but some streets are still under construction; watch your step. The 185 Empty Chairs installation is a memorial, not a photo opportunity—be respectful. If you visit a marae or Māori cultural site, remove your shoes and wait to be welcomed. The drinking water is safe, but the tap water in some older suburbs can have a chlorine taste; bring a filter bottle if you're sensitive.

Budget: A mid-range day in Christchurch costs around NZ$150-200 per person, including food, transport, and one paid attraction. You can do it for less by sticking to free activities—the Botanic Gardens, street art walks, the Cardboard Cathedral, the 185 Empty Chairs—and eating at the market. A splurge day with a fine dinner, tram rides, and a museum entry will run NZ$300-400.

The Unfinished Symphony

I left Christchurch after four days, on a morning flight that rose over the Canterbury Plains and the Southern Alps beyond. From the air, the city looked small, orderly, green. You couldn't see the cracks from up there. But I knew where they were.

That's the thing about Christchurch. It doesn't hide its damage. It doesn't pretend to be finished. The cathedral is still in ruins, the new one is still being debated, the 185 chairs are still waiting for a permanent home. The city is a work in progress, a conversation between memory and ambition, between what was lost and what might yet be built. It's not comfortable. It's not polished. It's real.

Other cities have older buildings, better museums, more famous landmarks. But no other city I've visited has been so honest about its own fragility. Christchurch is a reminder that cities, like people, are never finished. They are always becoming. And the ones that know that—the ones that show you the scaffolding, the empty lots, the painted walls, the cardboard cathedrals—are the ones worth visiting. Because they are the ones that understand what it means to be alive.

The Garden City isn't fully in bloom yet. But the roots are deep, the shoots are stubborn, and the light, when it hits the white paint on 185 empty chairs at eight in the morning, is something you will carry with you long after you've gone home.