The Art Deco city born from disaster — where the 1931 Hawke's Bay earthquake (7.8 magnitude, the deadliest natural disaster in New Zealand history) destroyed almost every Victorian building in the city and the subsequent complete rebuild in the Art Deco style then at peak fashion produced the most coherent and best-preserved collection of Art Deco architecture in the Southern Hemisphere, Marine Parade's beachfront strip hosts the world's largest Art Deco festival every February, and the surrounding Hawke's Bay wine region produces New Zealand's finest Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah from 70+ wineries within 30 minutes of the city
Napier (65,000 city; Hawke's Bay region 175,000) is a small coastal city on the east coast of New Zealand's North Island — unusual among world cities in that its entire historic fabric dates from a single compressed rebuilding period (1931–1933) following the catastrophic Hawke's Bay earthquake, which killed 256 people and flattened every masonry building in Napier and Hastings. The city that was rebuilt in 1931–1933 was rebuilt almost entirely in the Spanish Mission and Art Deco architectural styles then at international peak fashion — producing an accidental masterpiece of urban design. The…
The Napier area was settled by Ngāti Kahungunu, the largest iwi (tribe) of the Hawke's Bay region, prior to European settlement. British settlers arrived in the 1850s, and the city grew as the regional port (Hawke's Bay harbour, now extensively drained and converted to land) through the Victorian era. On February 3, 1931 at 10:47am, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck 15 km from Napier at a shallow 20 km depth — the deadliest natural disaster in New Zealand history, killing 256 people (161 in Napier, 93 in Hastings, 2 in Wairoa). The earthquake also drained Ahuriri Lagoon (7,400 acres of seabed…