5 Best Sights in City Center and Parnell, Auckland

Adjacent to Albert Park, the gallery has some 15,000 items dating from the 12th century but also shows innovative and challenging contemporary art that draws big crowds. Its modernist addition has breathed life and light into a structure built in the 1880s. The soaring glass, wood, and stone addition, which some say looks like stylized trees, both complements and contrasts with the formal, château-like main gallery. A courtyard and fountain space at the front is home to ever-changing works. In the museum, historic portraits of Māori chiefs by well-known New Zealand painters C.F. Goldie and Gottfried Lindauer offer an ethnocentric view of people once seen as fiercely martial. Goldie often used the same subject repeatedly—odd, considering his desire to document what he considered a dying race. New Zealand artists Frances Hodgkins, Doris Lusk, and Colin McCahon are also represented here, and there are shows and performances. The gallery has made a tilt to offering more international exhibitions, so check the website for the latest show. Free collection tours are given at 11:30 and 1:30. The hip, busy café offers views of the central city from its deck. The gift shop offers a range of books, original artworks, and keepsakes.

The Māori artifact collection here is one of the largest in the world, housed in a Greek Revival building in one of the city's finest parks, Auckland Domain, with views to match. Must-sees include a fine example of a pātaka (storehouse), a fixture in Māori villages, and Te Toki a Tapiri, a superb Māori waka (canoe). Made of a single log and measuring 85 feet long, it could carry 100 warriors, and its figurehead shows tremendous carving. To learn more about Māori culture, attend one of the performances, held twice a day, that demonstrate Māori song, dance, weaponry, and the haka (a ceremonial dance adopted by the All Blacks rugby team as an intimidating pregame warm-up). The museum also holds an exceptional collection of Pacific artifacts and hosts high-quality visiting or issue-specific exhibitions; it also has two cafés. On Anzac Day (April 25), thousands gather in front of the museum in a dawn service to recognize the gallantry of the country's servicemen and -women.

The largest of Auckland's extinct volcanoes and one of the city's best lookout points, One Tree Hill, or Maungakiekie, was the site of three Māori pā (fortifications). It had a single pine tree on its summit, but that was attacked by activists who saw it as a symbol of colonialism, and in 2000 it was taken down. Sir John Logan Campbell, the European founding father of the city, is buried on the summit. There is fantastic walking and running in the surrounding acreage known as Cornwall Park, with avenues of oaks, a kauri plantation, an old olive grove, and magnificent seasonal flower plantings. Or just take a mat and read under an old tree. Free electric barbecue sites are also available.  Because the park is a working farm of sheep and cattle, you'll need to be wary of cows with their calves along the paths. There's also a cricket club with old-style seating, where you can watch a game in summer, and a pavilion that sells refreshments.

The lovely Victorian wooden villas along the upper slope of Parnell Road have been transformed into antiques shops, designer boutiques, cafés, and restaurants. Parnell Village is the creation of developer Les Harvey, who saw the potential of the old, rundown shops and houses and almost single-handedly snatched them from the jaws of the bulldozers in the early 1960s by buying them, renovating them, and leasing them out. Today, this village of trim pink-and-white wooden facades is one of the most delightful parts of the city. At night, the area's restaurants and bars attract Auckland's well-heeled set.

The harborside marine park—the creation of New Zealand's most celebrated undersea explorer and treasure hunter—offers a fish's-eye view of the sea. A transparent tunnel, 120 yards long, makes a bewitching circuit past moray eels, lobsters, sharks, and stingrays. You can also have an encounter with king and gentoo penguins and their keepers in their icy abode, and take home photos to prove it.  The penguin attraction is popular and limited to four people per session, so book ahead.