The Square

The 17-acre central park-square that gives Palmerston North its shape

The Square is the heart of Palmerston North — a seven-hectare park-cum-plaza that fills the entire block where the city's main streets converge. It is one of the largest urban squares in New Zealand and unusual in that it is a real park rather than a paved plaza: lawns, mature oak and plane trees, a band rotunda, a clock tower, a small lake, and a 19th-century fountain.

The Square serves as the city's outdoor living room. The Saturday-morning farmers' market sets up on the western side, summer concerts fill the band rotunda, and the Festival of Cultures spreads over the lawns in March. Every restaurant, hotel, and shop in the centre is a few minutes' walk away.

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A story
The Square is laid out on the site of an old Rangitāne pā called Papaioea (the original Māori name for the area). Surveyors in the 1860s set out the new town around it and adopted the Square — wider than most British colonial-era town squares — as the centrepoint of every street axis. Every road in central Palmy still leads to or from it.

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