Fifteen years on from the earthquakes, Christchurch is a young city rebuilt to its own taste. The memorials, the cardboard cathedral, and what the gaps in the streets mean.
Visitors often arrive in Christchurch expecting an English cathedral city and find something else entirely: wide gaps between new buildings, murals five storeys high, a cathedral of cardboard, and a river running through parkland where suburbs used to stand. The explanation is the Christchurch earthquake rebuild, and it is the story a good guide tells first.
This is not a disaster tour. It is an account of what happened, who was lost, and what fifteen years of decisions have made of the place, told plainly, because the city is plain about it.
Two earthquakes, six months apart
The first came at 4.35am on 4 September 2010, a magnitude 7.1 centred near Darfield, west of the city. It broke chimneys and heritage brick, and remarkably nobody died. Christchurch spent the following months in hard hats, believing the worst was over.
The second was smaller and far closer. At 12.51pm on 22 February 2011, a magnitude 6.3 struck beneath the Port Hills, shallow and violent, with some of the strongest ground accelerations ever recorded in an urban area. It was lunchtime. One hundred and eighty-five people died, most of them in two building collapses, and the victims came from more than twenty countries. Liquefaction pushed grey silt up through the eastern suburbs, and much of the central city was fenced off for years.
Where the city remembers
Oi Manawa, the Canterbury Earthquake National Memorial, opened on 22 February 2017, six years to the day. It runs along both banks of the Ōtākaro Avon in the central city: a curved marble wall carrying the names on one side, a quiet space to sit on the other. The name was gifted by Ngāi Tahu and means the tremor or quivering of the heart.
A short walk away sits the work most visitors remember longest. Peter Majendie's 185 Empty Chairs is exactly that, 185 chairs painted white, each one different: an armchair, a baby capsule, a wheelchair, a piano stool. It began as a temporary installation, has moved sites more than once, and says in one glance what statistics cannot. Quake City, Canterbury Museum's earthquake exhibition, handles the science and the salvaged fragments with the same restraint.
Two cathedrals, one of them cardboard
Christ Church Cathedral, the building the city was arranged around, lost its spire in February 2011 and much of its west end afterwards. What followed was a decade of argument between demolition and reinstatement. Reinstatement won, but work has stopped and started as funding came and went, and the scaffolded shell in Cathedral Square is the most honest monument in town to how hard rebuilding actually is.
Meanwhile, the Japanese architect Shigeru Ban designed the Transitional Cathedral, known universally as the Cardboard Cathedral, and it opened in 2013. Its A-frame is built from large cardboard tubes coated against the weather, and it was intended to last around fifty years. Standing inside, with light coming through the triangular window above the altar, is a genuinely moving twenty minutes and costs nothing.
What the city built instead
Rather than restore what was lost, Christchurch built to its own taste, and the results look like nowhere else in New Zealand.
- Tūranga, the central library opened in 2018, five floors of glass and gold facing Cathedral Square, and one of the best free places in the city to sit.
- Te Pae, the riverside convention centre opened in 2021, its facade patterned after braided rivers.
- The Margaret Mahy Family Playground, opened in 2015 and named for the Christchurch author, the largest of its kind in the country.
- Riverside Market, a covered produce and food hall on Oxford Terrace that gave the centre back its weekday crowd.
Our Christchurch city full day tour works through most of these on foot and by vehicle, with time to actually go inside rather than drive past.
The river, the Red Zone and the street art
East of the centre, whole residential streets were red zoned after the land beneath them failed. Around 600 hectares along the Ōtākaro Avon have since been cleared, and the corridor is slowly returning to river, native planting and cycleway. Walking there is strange: kerbs and driveways still visible, grass where houses stood.
The other thing that filled the gaps was paint. Large-scale murals by New Zealand and international artists went up across the centre from 2013 onwards, and many remain. Ask your guide which ones are new; the list changes yearly.
What survived
New Regent Street came through it. Built in 1932 as a single row of pastel Spanish Mission shopfronts, it was strengthened, repaired and reopened in 2013, and the heritage tram runs down the middle of it again. The Botanic Gardens and Hagley Park were never lost, which is why the Garden City name still holds.
That mix is the point. A half day covers the outline, which is what our Christchurch half day city tour is built for. A full day, or a private Christchurch city tour shaped around your interests, is what it takes to get past it. See the range on our Christchurch city tours page, and more in our guides to things to do in Christchurch and one day in Christchurch.
Common questions
Is it appropriate to visit the earthquake memorials as a visitor?
Yes. Oi Manawa and the 185 Empty Chairs were made to be visited, and locals are generally glad when travellers take the time to understand what happened. Read the names, keep your voice down, and treat both as you would any memorial.
Can you go inside Christ Church Cathedral?
No. The cathedral in Cathedral Square remains a construction site under reinstatement and is not open to the public. The Transitional Cathedral on Hereford Street, the Cardboard Cathedral, is open and welcomes visitors.
How long do you need to understand the rebuild?
Half a day covers the central city landmarks and the memorials. A full day adds the eastern Red Zone, the Port Hills viewpoints and time inside Quake City or Tūranga, where the story gains its detail.
Is the city still under construction?
Far less than it was. The central city is largely rebuilt and busy, with a handful of significant sites, the cathedral among them, still in progress. Empty lots remain in places, and they are part of the honest picture.
If this is the Christchurch you would like to understand properly, we can shape a day around it, including our Christchurch luxury tours for travellers who would rather have the city to themselves. Tell us what matters to you.
