Albert Park

Albert Park is downtown Auckland's historic central park — 5.3 hectares of Victorian garden at the top of Auckland University, with formal bedding, palm trees, a fountain, a marble statue of Queen Victoria (erected 1899), and the old gun emplacements from the 19th-century Albert Barracks preserved around the edges. The park opened to the public in 1882 on the site of a former British military barracks; the barracks wall survives along Alfred Street.

The park is the university's unofficial front lawn — lunchtime fills it with students, and the annual Auckland Lantern Festival (Chinese New Year) traditionally fills the park with thousands of silk lanterns and fills downtown with tens of thousands of visitors. The Band Rotunda at the park's centre dates to 1902 and is used for summer concerts. The park is bordered by Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland University's historic Clock Tower building, and the Old Government House, giving it a distinctive concentration of 19th-century civic architecture.