Christchurch - Canterbury Museum

On the eastern edge of the Botanic Gardens, in a building of 1870 designed by Benjamin Mountfort, is the Canterbury Museum, which has a fine collection of material on the city's colonial past, as well as magnificent Maori woodcarving and objects carved from greenstone. Displays in the main hall illustrate the history of Antarctic exploration from its beginnings down to the recent past.

The first director of the museum and one of the most important collectors of material was a geologist, Julius von Haast, who had carried out extensive surveys of the South Island. He used his large collection of moa bones in exchanges with other museums to build up the Canterbury Museum.