Billed as the largest open-air shopping centre in the world, Ala Moana Center in Honolulu is a vast retail destination set between the city's downtown and the famous beaches of Waikiki. Opened in 1959, just days before Hawaii became a state, it gathers hundreds of stores, restaurants and services across several breezy, partly open levels, and ranks among the highest-grossing malls in the United States. The centre rose on what had been swampland on the edge of the city, an ambitious gamble that .....

The world's most famous jazz brand set up two blocks from Waikiki Beach. Blue Note Hawaii opened on 14 January 2016 inside the Outrigger Waikiki Beach Resort at 2335 Kalakaua Avenue, with Kenny G and ukulele master Jake Shimabukuro splitting the opening run - a pairing that announced the club's double mission of international headliners and Hawaii's own greats. The room took over the showroom where the Society of Seven had performed for four decades, transformed by a 3.5-million-dollar renovatio.....

An emergency became a homecoming when University of Hawaii football moved onto its own campus for the first time in half a century. The Clarence T.C. Ching Athletics Complex at 1105 Lower Campus Road in Manoa opened in 2015 as a 4,100-seat practice, soccer, beach volleyball and track facility, named for the Honolulu developer and philanthropist whose foundation has been one of the university's great benefactors. Its life changed in December 2020, when structural corrosion forced 46-year-old Aloh.....

Rising above the eastern edge of Waikiki, Diamond Head is among the most recognisable natural landmarks in the Pacific, a broad volcanic tuff cone whose saw-toothed rim forms the backdrop to countless images of Honolulu. Known in Hawaiian as Lēʻahi, often translated as "brow of the tuna" for its profile, the crater was formed in a single explosive eruption roughly 300,000 years ago. Its English name came later, from nineteenth-century British sailors who mistook glittering calcite crystals on .....

America's third-oldest continuously operating community theatre performs on the slopes of a volcano. Diamond Head Theatre at 520 Makapuu Avenue in Honolulu traces its lineage to 28 April 1915, when a troupe called The Footlights staged Pinero's The Amazons at the old Honolulu Opera House with a cast of prominent citizens. The Footlights grew into the Honolulu Community Theatre in 1934 - mission: community service through the art of theatre - and in 1952 found a permanent home in the aging movie .....

A short stroll from the sands of Waikiki, the Hard Rock Cafe Honolulu brings the international chain's music-themed dining to the heart of Hawaii's most famous resort district. Set on Beach Walk amid the hotels, shops and restaurants that crowd the area, it offers visitors a familiar, upbeat experience wrapped in island touches, blending the brand's global identity with a distinctly Hawaiian sense of place. True to form, the cafe is filled with rock-and-roll memorabilia, signed guitars, stage o.....

To get in, you walk through a 24 Hour Fitness, up the stairs and across a parking lot toward a glowing sign that still says Hawaiian Brian's - and behind it waits 21,000 square feet of pool tables, dartboards and live music. HB Social Club, at 1680 Kapiolani Boulevard near Ala Moana in Honolulu, is the city's great all-purpose night-out warehouse, operating since the mid-1980s. Locals knew it for decades as Hawaiian Brian's - a billiards hall and dive bar dating to 1983 that settled at the Kapi.....

Spread across some three hundred acres at the eastern end of Waikiki, in the shadow of Diamond Head, Kapiolani Regional Park is the oldest and largest public park in Hawaii. It was established in 1877 under King Kalakaua, who named it in honour of his queen, Kapiolani, and dedicated it as a gathering place for the public, a role it has filled ever since across generations of residents and visitors. The park's broad lawns, towering banyans and shady monkeypod trees offer a welcome expanse of ope.....

Construction began to the live accompaniment of the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra - a ceremonial groundbreaking in January 1963 for the hall the orchestra would call home. The Neal S. Blaisdell Concert Hall, at 777 Ward Avenue on the edge of downtown Honolulu, opened in September 1964 as part of the Honolulu International Center. The complex was a memorial with ambition: built on the historic Ward Estate for around 14 million dollars as a living tribute to Hawaii's veterans, the center - concert .....

Over a billion people watched what happened in this round room on 14 January 1973 - Elvis Presley's Aloha from Hawaii, the first concert by a solo artist ever beamed worldwide by satellite. The Neal S. Blaisdell Arena, at 777 Ward Avenue in Honolulu, opened in February 1964 as part of the Honolulu International Center. The building is a mid-century dome: a circular hall with radial structural ribs and unobstructed sightlines, designed with total flexibility - portable lower-level seating reconf.....