Newtown, Wellington: A Local's Guide

Newtown is one of the most diverse suburbs in Wellington City, and you can taste it on Riddiford Street in about ten minutes of walking. Ethiopian, Vietnamese, Indian, Persian and Italian restaurants sit alongside vintage clothing stores, organic grocers and some of the best cheap eats in the country. Add Wellington Zoo at one end, Wellington Hospital on the other, a big weekly market and a strong live-music scene, and you have a suburb that punches far above its weight for less than a couple of square kilometres.

The Vibe

Newtown is loud, colourful, a little rough around the edges and completely beloved. It sits south of the Basin Reserve, sprawling down Riddiford Street and across into Constable Street, with a mix of brick shopfronts, Edwardian villas, 1960s flats and more recent townhouse developments. The high street is properly lived in, the pubs are proper pubs, and the fruit and veg shop will weigh your coriander without talking to you if that is the kind of day you are having.

The suburb is home to long-established Somali, Ethiopian, Indian and Pasifika communities, along with a big student and creative contingent — the 2023 census put more than a third of residents as born overseas. It is a place where you hear several languages on a single walk down the street and where community feeling is actually a thing, not a slogan.

A Quick History

Newtown developed as a working-class suburb from the 1870s, when the city tram line pushed south from the CBD in 1879 and made the flat Newtown valley suddenly commutable. The tramway is long gone, but the grid of streets it laid out is still there, along with a lot of the original housing. Wellington Hospital opened on its Newtown site in 1881 and has been expanding ever since, and Wellington Zoo, the oldest zoo in New Zealand, opened on Newtown's southern edge in 1906.

Waves of migration have shaped the suburb ever since. Greek and Italian families in the mid-twentieth century, Pacific Island communities from the 1960s, and a steady flow of families from Ethiopia, Somalia, India, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan since the 1990s have turned Newtown into one of the most visibly multicultural communities in the country.

Things to Do in Newtown

Wellington Zoo is the main tourist-facing attraction and genuinely one of the best small zoos you will visit anywhere. It runs excellent conservation programmes — including The Nest Te Kōhanga, its native animal hospital — was the first zoo in the world to earn carboNZero certification, and has a layout that actually lets the animals behave like animals. Good for kids, good for adults, good in the rain.

Closer to the high street, the weekly Newtown Fruit and Vegetable Market on Saturday mornings at the Newtown School hall on Mein Street is one of Wellington's best. Cheap flowers, bulk-bin spices, fresh bread, homemade samosas, clothing you will not find anywhere else and always a queue for the coffee cart. The Newtown Festival, held in March, closes the high street to traffic and fills it with live music, food stalls and up to eighty thousand people for the day — the biggest free street festival in the region.

For more of what's on, the Wellington events page tracks the lot.

Food & Drink

Newtown is where Wellington goes for cheap, authentic, unfussy food, and the bar is embarrassingly high. The Riddiford and Constable Street strip packs in restaurants that would be a destination in any other city: Ethiopian at Mother of Coffee, Vietnamese at Pho Viet Street Food, Indian at Planet Spice, Persian kebabs and baking at Morteza, ramen at The Ramen Shop, and wood-fired pizza and Italian deli goods at Mediterranean Foods on Constable Street.

For cafes, Peoples Coffee on Constable Street is a Newtown institution and a fair-trade pioneer, Baobab on Riddiford Street does a reliable all-day brunch, and French Cancan handles the pastries. For a beer, Moon on Riddiford Street is craft beer, pizza and one of the best small live-music rooms in the city all rolled into one, and the Sandringham Hotel is the classic Newtown pub. For restaurant and bar roundups check Wellington restaurants, Wellington cafes and Wellington bars near me.

Getting Around

Newtown is flat and well-served by buses. The high-frequency Metlink route 1 runs from the Railway Station through the CBD, down Riddiford Street and on to Island Bay, coming every few minutes most of the day. The walk from Newtown to Courtenay Place takes about twenty-five minutes if you are in no hurry, fifteen if you are.

Parking is much easier than in the CBD, which is part of why locals are happy to drive in for dinner.

Living in Newtown

Newtown has historically been one of the more affordable central suburbs, though the gap has been closing. Home to around 9,100 people, its housing is a mix of brick villas, 1930s bungalows, old flats and new medium-density builds. It is popular with students, health workers (thanks to the hospital), young families and anyone who wants to be a flat walk from the CBD without paying Te Aro apartment rents.

The suburb has strong community infrastructure: a residents' association, the Newtown Community and Cultural Centre, a library, a community garden and the well-known Commonsense Organics on Constable Street. Schools in zone include Newtown School, South Wellington Intermediate and co-ed Wellington High School.

One Last Thing

If Thorndon is the suburb you take your parents to, Newtown is the suburb you take your hungriest friend to. It is loud, it is generous, it is a little bit scruffy and it is one hundred percent Wellington. Come for the zoo, stay for the curry, come back for the market.

Heading down? Check the Wellington weather and our things to do in Wellington page for more ideas.

Know a Newtown spot we have missed? Flick it to us at [email protected] and we will add it to the next update. Steve and Kirstie, WellyBuzz.