Wellington: The capital of New Zealand

Wellington is the capital of New Zealand. It offers an unforgettable city experience in a natural setting. It is located between a beautiful harbour and rolling green hills. Wellington has excellent shopping, professional theatre and cafes and restaurants all close to untouched nature spots. Te Papa, New Zealand’s national museum is on the waterfront. Walk to Te Papa from a central city restaurant and sat a local fashion store or an art gallery on the way.

Wellington is a harbour city nicknamed Windy Wellington and promotes itself as "Absolutely Positively Wellington". Its motto "Suprema a situ", which claims site supremacy - with some justification. Wellington, known as New Zealand’s arts and culture capital, offers an unmatched blend of culture, heritage, fine food, and lively arts and entertainment.

Surrounded by hills and a rugged coastline, the city boasts a stunning harbour. Wellington’s charm is that it serves up a vibrant inner city experience with a slice of New Zealand scenery. And because of its compact nature, you can sample it all - boutique shopping, art galleries, trendy cafes and restaurants. Right on its doorstep is a network of walking and biking trails with beautiful wineries and vineyards just a few hours away.

Wellington is a city that brims with energy and vitality, it offers an almost overwhelming array of theatre, music, dance, fine arts and galleries and museums. It also home to one of the nation’s key attractions, the museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, which is recognised as a world leader of interactive and innovative museum experiences.

Wellington offers a unique mix of experiences few cities could lay claim to. With so many options at your fingertips, you’ll need at least three days to slip into the groove of this amazing place.

Climate

Wellington is known as the Windy City. The prevailing wind is from the northwest but the strongest winds are southerly. The wind speed and direction can be seen by the flag being flown from the Beehive. A large flag is flown only on calm days, a small flag is flown when windy days are expected.

The temperature in Wellington rarely drops below 0 degrees Celsius, even on a cold winter's night, while daytime winter temperatures are rarely lower than 8 degrees Celsius. During summer, the daytime maximum temperature rarely gets above 23 degrees Celsius. Away from the seaside, in inland valleys, frosts of up to -10 degrees Celsius have been recorded and snow has been known to fall and settle on the nearby mountain ranges for a few days after particularly nasty southerly storms.