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Wellington is the capital city of New Zealand and its third largest city. The Windy City is on the foreshore of Wellington Harbour and ringed by mountains, providing the scenic home of many of New Zealand's national arts and cultural attractions.

Understand

Wellington, known as New Zealand’s arts and culture capital, offers an unmatched blend of culture, heritage, fine food, and lively arts and entertainment.
Surrounded by hills and a rugged coastline, the city boasts a stunning harbour. Wellington’s charm is that it serves up a vibrant inner city experience with a slice of New Zealand scenery. And because of its compact nature, you can sample it all - boutique shopping, art galleries, trendy cafes and restaurants. Right on its doorstep is a network of walking and biking trails with beautiful wineries and vineyards just a few hours away.
Wellington is a city that brims with energy and vitality, it offers an almost overwhelming array of theatre, music, dance, fine arts and galleries and museums. It is also home to one of the nation’s key attractions, the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, which is recognised as a world leader of interactive and innovative museum experiences.
Wellington offers a unique mix of experiences few cities could lay claim to. With so many options at your fingertips, you’ll need at least three days to slip into the groove of this amazing place.
The city promotes itself as "Absolutely Positively Wellington". Its motto "Suprema a situ" claims site supremacy - with some justification. Wellington is named as the 4th top city in the world to visit in 2011 by "Lonely Planet Best in Travel 2011".

Climate

Wellington is known as the Windy City. Locals generally acknowledge that the climate is terrible. The prevailing wind is from the northwest but the strongest winds are southerly. The wind speed and direction can be seen by the flag being flown from the Beehive. A large flag is flown only on calm days, a small flag is flown when windy days are expected.
The temperature in Wellington rarely drops below 0°C, even on a cold winter's night, while daytime winter temperatures are rarely lower than 8°C. During summer, the daytime maximum temperature rarely gets above 25°C. Away from the seaside, in inland valleys, frosts of up to -10°C have been recorded and snow has been known to fall and settle on the nearby mountain ranges for a few days after particularly nasty southerly storms.

Geography

Wellington sits at the southern tip of New Zealand's North Island. The city core lies along the western shore of highly-protected Wellington Harbor, with the city's suburbs spreading out in all directions. The city's primary urban core consists of the CBD and the adjoining 'city suburb' of Te Aro, to the south and east. A fairly dense zone continues south from Te Aro into the adjoining suburbs of Mt. Cook and Newtown, as well as Kilbirnie on the other side of the parklands of Mt. Victoria.
East from Te Aro, north-south-running ridgelines form Mt. Victoria and, further east yet, the Miramar Peninsula, which forms the western side of the mouth to Wellington Harbor. These hills—and the isthmus between—are home to a number of suburban areas as well as parkland and beaches.
Several kilometres south of central Wellington is the rugged and stunning South Coast of the North island, consisting of a string of small (and some large) bays, many with rocky beaches and interesting tide pools.
To the west, the suburbs between Karori and Johnsonville spread into the hillsides, with various parks and hiking trails, and then give way to open rural areas such as Makara.