Auckland

Tāmaki Makaurau – the isthmus desired by many. Auckland sits on a narrow neck of land between two harbours, bristling with 53 volcanic cones, and it has been fought over, settled, and resettled for centuries: the views are worth the argument.

Visitors tend to arrive, scan the harbour from the Sky Tower, and declare themselves satisfied. But Auckland wears its most interesting stories quietly, in the volcanic terraces of Maungakiekie where a fortified Māori village once held thousands, in the hand-carved tunnels of North Head where colonial soldiers dug through rock against a Russian invasion that never came, and across the ferry in Devonport, where Victorian villas and New Zealand's oldest cinema sit at the foot of an 87-metre cone.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours follow these threads from the waterfront to the summit. Walk from Khartoum Place – where New Zealand became the first country to grant women the vote – through Albert Park to the Viaduct, or take the ferry and let Devonport unspool at your pace. Earbuds in, route loaded. Tāmaki Makaurau will do the rest.