This was published 1 year ago
Christchurch earthquake: 10 years after disaster, Kiwi city gets its buzz back
Christchurch's new Observatory Hotel is set within the city's historic Arts Centre which also houses the recently restored Townsend Teece Telescope. Credit:
It's more than a decade since Christchurch suffered its catastrophic earthquake. Slowly - painfully slowly - the shattered pieces, like the parts of a seriously disturbed jumbo jigsaw, are being reassembled in what has been an astronomical restoration challenge.
Along with the city's cherished, almost completely destroyed centrepiece cathedral which is now undergoing a belated restoration, another of the man-made marvels of New Zealand's second-biggest city, the historic Gothic-style Arts Centre, or Te Matatiki Toi Ora, has largely reopened after also being badly-damaged during the quake on February 22, 2011.
And among the tenants in the sprawling Arts Centre - formerly the city's Canterbury College where Nobel Prize-winning Kiwi nuclear physicist Ernest Rutherford was educated - is the deluxe 33-room Observatory Hotel.
A room at the Observatory Hotel.
As the boldly-decorated hotel's title suggests, it's within the former biology and physics building, below and around a tower, atop which sits the domed late 19th-century observatory, most of which collapsed to the ground during the earthquake.
The Townsend Teece Telescope, as it's officially known, will soon reopen to the public and hotel guests who will be able to reach it via an exquisite original timber spiral staircase. The hotel also plans to launch a fashionable bar.
The centre, buzzing anew, also hosts museums, cinema, cafes, bars, shops as well as the University of Canterbury's School of Music which holds performances in the nearby stained glass Great Hall, which has been strengthened and restored following the earthquake.
Some of The Observatory's rooms, designed in a contemporarily-minded arts and crafts style, deliver views of the observatory dome and tower, as well as overlooking the Arts Centre quadrangle and some of its dozen or so heritage-protected buildings.See observatory.co.nz
The writer travelled courtesy of Air New Zealand and Tourism New Zealand and ChristchurchNZ. See observatory.co.nz; newzealand.com; christchurchNZ
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