The top floor of the Museum is dedicated to the memory of fallen soldiers and included within the war memorial galleries is the spectacular World War One Hall of Memories.
The World War One Hall of Memories includes a memorial sanctuary which is used significantly for commemoration.
New Zealand sent more men to fight in the First World War, per head of population, than any other nation. 18,166 New Zealanders died from a country of only one million.
The grieving was made harder for New Zealand families because nearly all those killed were buried overseas. 5,325 New Zealand soldiers almost a third of all those killed - have no known grave. Families therefore had nowhere to focus their grief and say goodbye to their loved ones.
For this reason, a large number of war memorials were built around New Zealand, which acted as symbolic graveyards for grieving families. But New Zealand was also very proud of the bravery of our diggers and wanted to celebrate their heroism. Thus war memorials came to fill an uneasy dual role, at once glorifying war as heroic and yet bemoaning the waste of human life.