Living Shrine to Deco

Within two years of Napier’s devastating 1931 earthquake the city, which had chosen to rebuild in the Art deco style, was being dubbed the “most modern town on the globe”. “Much of the innovative architecture pioneered at that time still stands and Napier – in many ways the most unlikely of spots – is now a shrine to the Art Deco movement, a town with the highest concentration of the genre in the southern hemisphere and a place which, alongside Miami Beach, is a must-visit for devotees,” Adrian Bridge writes for the Telegraph.