Around New Year 2023 I returned to Christchurch for the first time in five or six years, finding a city revitalised, with far more energy and life than even before the terrible earthquakes of 2010 and 2011. It was a pleasure to wander around the city centre, finding many new buildings and sights, and a few older places I’d never visited before.

Last time I visited this area by the Avon it was home to the Re:Start Container Mall. In 2017 this was replaced with the fabulous Riverside Market, home to 30 independent food outlets and 40 fresh produce stalls.

Close by a street performer was making huge bubbles…

I had visited the Christchurch Transitional Cathedral before but it was a pleasure to revisit.

Christchurch Arts Centre has been lovingly restored, included recently the beautiful Great Hall.

It is home to a couple of museums I’ve never visited before. The Teece Museum of Classical Antiquities is small (basically one room) but has a nicely presented collection of classical objects.

Rutherford’s Den was a gem, dedicated to Nobel Prize winner Ernest Rutherford, a New Zealander who was one of greatest physicist ever.

The former Christchurch Cathedral is being rebuilt at great expense, a void in the centre of Cathedral Square despite the new buildings surrounding it.

Tūranga is the rather funky (particularly the toilets) new library.

Possibly less successful is the enormous Te Pae Christchurch Convention Centre, which has some interesting features but blocks the view along Gloucester St toward the Avon.

Over a decade on from the quakes there are still significant areas of the central city under developed or derelict.

But thankfully there is still a good mix of the old and the new.

And there is plenty of wonderful street art around.

The lovely Antigua Boatsheds have been in use since 1882.

There are plenty of statues and memorials in Christchurch, from Captain Scott to the Suffragettes to Antony Gormley.

I didn’t have time on this visit to go inside but the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū is one of the best in the country.

To finish with the appropriately somber and reflective Canterbury Earthquake National Memorial, opened in 2017.