Taranaki's volcanic coast — where the perfect snow-capped cone of Mount Taranaki (2,518 metres, the most symmetrical stratovolcano in the world after Mount Fuji) is visible from the sea 50 km away and from every elevated street in New Plymouth, the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery is one of the finest modern art museums in New Zealand (in a purpose-built 2014 building with its own Len Lye Centre dedicated entirely to the kinetic sculpture of New Zealand's most celebrated visual artist), the 7-km Coastal Walkway runs uninterrupted along the Tasman Sea coastline connecting Pūkekura Park's botanical lakeside gardens to the Fitzroy rock pools, and the Pātaka Kōrero (the New Plymouth District Library's new cultural hub) anchors Te Ara O Tohu Whenua — the regenerated city centre
New Plymouth (85,000 city; Taranaki region 125,000) is the largest city in the Taranaki region on the west coast of New Zealand's North Island — the commercial and cultural centre of a province dominated by its shield volcano, Mount Taranaki/Egmont, and by the offshore oil and gas fields that have made Taranaki New Zealand's wealthiest region per capita. New Plymouth has an unusually strong modern art scene anchored by the Govett-Brewster Gallery and the Len Lye Centre (2015).
The Taranaki region was densely settled by Māori (principally the Taranaki iwi and their neighbours) well before European contact — the fertile coastal plains below Taranaki's volcanic slopes produced abundant kūmara (sweet potato) harvests and the region's maunga (mountain) was revered as an ancestor. New Plymouth was established as a British settlement in 1841 and the subsequent decades produced the most violent phase of the New Zealand Wars in the North Island: the First Taranaki War (1860–1861) and Second Taranaki War (1863–1869) arose primarily from disputes over the Waitara land purchas…