lift doorsToday’s guest post comes from Heath­er of Food­ie Gems of Wel­lie. Yay, we love guest posts!

We all love a secret. Espe­cially one that deliv­ers pleas­ure.

A jaunt around the recently launched Secret Art Walk uncovered all sorts of Wel­ling­ton treas­ures. From the mag­ni­fi­cent rata cone archi­tec­ture of the Supreme Court to the holo­graph­ic dis­play of Maui stor­ies on the top floor of the City and Sea Museum, and the Arc de Tri­omphe foy­er in the Domin­ion Build­ing, there is a wealth of inform­a­tion and clev­erness on dis­play.

The Secret Art Walk is a self-guided exper­i­ence of between two and four hours (we could have taken much longer), with the start cur­rently at the Reserve Bank and the fin­ish at the Museum Hotel. From Feb­ru­ary 2013 the start reverts to the newly restored Back­bench­er.

Unsur­pris­ingly Chris Par­kin (of the Museum Hotel) is one of the brains behind the ven­ture, along with the Prop­erty Coun­cil of New Zea­l­and and sup­por­ted by Beca.

Because many of the treas­ures are in cor­por­ate build­ings, it’s best to do this walk on a week­day. And with com­fort­able shoes, giv­en it wends its way through 30 stops from one end of town to the oth­er, criss-cross­ing back and forth between Lamb­ton, the water­front, Wil­lis and Manners/Courtenay areas.

Of course there are many lovely water­ing holes along the way to rest one’s feet and eyes (we con­veni­ently felt in need of reju­ven­a­tion by the deli­cious Ti Kouka), so you should def­in­itely make it at least a half-day adven­ture.

By the end of the walk you’ll have absorbed more of Wellington’s fas­cin­at­ing his­tory and cul­ture than you ever knew exis­ted.

Maps are avail­able from iSite.