The world's windiest capital and the creative hub of the Pacific — where Peter Jackson made Middle-earth, Te Papa Tongarewa holds the world's greatest Māori collection, and the café culture rivals Melbourne cup-for-cup
Wellington (215,000; metro 440,000) is the southernmost national capital in the world, perched on the southern tip of New Zealand's North Island overlooking Cook Strait. Despite its modest size, Wellington has a cultural output disproportionate to any comparable city: Weta Workshop (Peter Jackson's VFX and props company, home of The Lord of the Rings, Avatar, and Planet of the Apes) operates from the suburb of Miramar; the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa holds the world's most significant collection of Māori taonga (treasures) and the largest natural history collection in the Southern…
Wellington was settled by Māori (Ngāti Tara, Ngāti Ira, and related iwi) long before European contact; the area was known as Te Whanganui-a-Tara ('the great harbour of Tara'). European settlement began in 1840 with the New Zealand Company's first organised colonisation, and Wellington became the capital of New Zealand in 1865 (replacing Auckland) specifically because of its central location between the North and South Islands. The Wellington earthquake of 1855 (magnitude 8.2, the largest recorded in New Zealand's written history) caused the harbour to rise by 1.5 metres, permanently changing…