Historic Tours and Trails

The Christchurch City Council Heritage Team has written brochures to guide you on historic walking tours - within easy walking distances - and on longer historic trails, which require the use of public transport. To guide you, these brochures are available from most hotels and accommodation houses, or you may download them free.

These documents are PDFs. You will require the free Adobe Acrobat reader to view them.  

Christchurch before 1850 – Inner-city and coastal heritage trails

Two trails – the Inner-City Heritage Trail, and the Coastal Heritage Trail, still hold traces of the first Maori peoples on the landscape of Christchurch about 700 years ago. On each trail you will find information panels and plaques that provide stories about historically significant sites. For the Inner-City Heritage Trail, allow about 30 minutes to walk from the inner-city to the last site at Barbadoes Street. For the Coastal Heritage Trail, once you’ve caught the No. 3 Sumner bus from the inner-city to Redcliffs, allow about 30 minutes to walk from Moncks Cave (in Redcliffs) to Cave Rock, in Sumner. Download this pamphlet [PDF 326KB).

Explore Historic Christchurch – City of Gothic Proportions

Despite the hardships of colonisation, the city of Christchurch quickly took shape on the Canterbury Plains. After just 60 years of organised settlement Christchurch was a thriving and confident city with distinctive buildings that reflected the great variety of architectural tastes favoured by the late Victorian and Edwardian times. The city’s early leading architect, Benjamin Woolfield Mountfort, left an enduring legacy with his Gothic Revival-inspired buildings. Come and explore a small sample of the city’s sites and architecture highlighted in this brochure. Most of the buildings can only be viewed from the street but there are a number of public buildings and churches open to the public. Download this pamphlet [PDF 287KB).