Museums Wellington

The visitor experiences are: Capital E, City Gallery Wellington, Wellington Museum, Space Place, Cable Car Museum and the Nairn Street Cottage. They also have a management agreement with the NZ Cricket Museum Trust to provide support to the New Zealand Cricket Museum.

Located at the top of the Cable Car, Space Place is housed in Carter Observatory,  New Zealand’s longest-serving national observatory.  Opened in 1937 thanks in part to a bequest from politician, farmer and philanthropist Charles Rooking Carter, the Observatory quickly established itself as a base for astronomical research. Over the years, its focus has changed and in 2010, it reopened as a visitor attraction.  As Space Place, it offers visitors the chance to get up close and personal with our starry night sky and see how our little nation has made a huge contribution to our understanding of space.

Home to the Wallis family who emigrated to New Zealand from England in 1857, Nairn Street Cottage is Wellington’s oldest known home.  It remained in family ownership until the 1970s, when – earmarked for demolition – the original owner’s granddaughter successfully fought the order with the help of the newly formed Colonial Cottage Museum Society. The Colonial Cottage was the first ‘house’ museum in Wellington, and since opening in 1980 has had its facilities improved with the building of a new interpretation centre in 1999. It is registered with the New Zealand Historic Places Trust as having ‘outstanding significance’.

Earmarked for demolition in the 1970s when new technology rendered the Winding House as surplus to requirements, the building found a new purpose in recent years as the Cable Car Museum. Built in 1902 to accommodate the steam engine and winding gear and to serve as a maintenance depot for the grip cars, the Winding House now brings to life the unique transport system that has transported people between the harbour and the hills for more than a century.