The Waikato's river city and New Zealand's garden capital — where Hamilton sits in a bend of the Waikato River (the longest river in New Zealand, 425 km from Tongariro to the Tasman Sea, flowing through Hamilton's heart at 3–4 knots) and the Hamilton Gardens (a 58-hectare garden 3 km south of the city centre) are the most visited paid tourist attraction in New Zealand — a series of 21 themed garden 'rooms' from a Chinese Scholar Garden to an Indian Char Bagh to a New Zealand Modernist Garden that are architecturally distinct enough to be used as film sets (they stood in for multiple countries in the Amazon Prime series Wheel of Time), Hobbiton Movie Set is 50 km south near Matamata (the most visited film-set attraction in the Southern Hemisphere), and Waitomo Glowworm Caves (80 km southwest) are the world's premier glowworm cave system
Hamilton (180,000 city; 260,000 metro) is the fourth-largest city in New Zealand and the largest inland city — a university city on the Waikato River 130 km south of Auckland that functions as the commercial centre of the Waikato and King Country regions. Hamilton is the base city for Hobbiton Movie Set, Waitomo Glowworm Caves, and the Hamilton Gardens — making it one of the most tourism-rich hinterlands of any mid-size city in Oceania.
The Waikato River valley was the heartland of the Waikato Tainui iwi — one of the most powerful and populous Māori tribes in New Zealand, numbering perhaps 80,000 people at the peak of their pre-European population. The Waikato wars (1863–1864) were the largest military campaign in New Zealand history: 18,000 British imperial and colonial troops fought against perhaps 5,000 Waikato Māori warriors in a campaign that resulted in the confiscation (raupatu) of 1.2 million acres of the Waikato basin — the most extensive confiscation in New Zealand history. The town of Hamilton was established in 1…