The city where a river became a legal person — where Whanganui's Whanganui River (the longest navigable river in New Zealand) was granted the same legal rights as a person by New Zealand's Parliament in March 2017 (the first river in the world to receive legal personhood, following 140 years of Māori advocacy from the river's guardian people, the Whanganui iwi who consider the river their ancestor), the Royal Wanganui Opera House (1900, the most intact Victorian opera house in New Zealand) sits on Guyton Street beside an intact Edwardian streetscape, the Whanganui Regional Museum holds the country's largest collection of Māori taonga (treasures) outside Wellington's Te Papa, and the Whanganui Journey (one of DOC's nine designated Great Walks — a 145 km five-day canoe journey down the river from Taumarunui through the Whanganui National Park wilderness) is the only Great Walk done entirely by water
Whanganui (50,000 city; Manawatū-Whanganui region 240,000) is a small river city on the west coast of New Zealand's North Island at the mouth of the Whanganui River — the longest navigable river in New Zealand and one of the most significant rivers in Māori cultural history. The city has an unusually rich collection of Victorian and Edwardian architecture and a well-established arts community that has made Whanganui a surprising cultural destination.
The Whanganui River (Te Awa Tupua — 'the river that speaks') has been the spiritual and physical centre of the Whanganui iwi for at least 800 years — the iwi trace their ancestry to the river itself, and their traditional greeting is 'Ko au te awa, ko te awa ko au' ('I am the river, the river is me'). European settlement of the Whanganui area began in the 1840s and was followed by sustained conflict over land during the New Zealand Wars (the Whanganui iwi were caught between Crown and King movement forces). The Whanganui city was established by the 1860s as a river port town; the Whanganui Ri…