Parts of a marae, with a labelled diagram

The parts of a marae are the marae ātea ‘courtyard in front of the meeting house’, the open space where visitors are welcomed; the wharenui ‘meeting house’ that faces it; the wharekai ‘dining hall’; the toilets and showers; and the waharoa ‘gateway’ the visitors are called through. That is how Te Ara, the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, sums it up: a marae usually consists of a meeting house with the courtyard in front, a dining hall and an ablutions block. Below are two labelled diagrams, one of the whole marae and one of the front of a meeting house, then what each part is called and means, how the house stands for an ancestor, and what to do in each part when you visit.

Updated 20 October 2026 · 9 min read

Tap 🔊 to hear an example. Māori examples play Papa Reo, the te reo Māori voice made by Te Hiku Media from recordings of native speakers.

What is a marae? The meaning of the word

Te Aka Māori Dictionary defines marae as the courtyard, the open area in front of the wharenui where formal greetings and discussions take place, and adds that the word is often also used to include the complex of buildings around it. So the word has two meanings, the open space and the whole place, and both are correct. Te Aka also lists marae as a verb and a modifier meaning generous and hospitable.

A marae belongs to a community: Te Aka says that traditionally the wharenui belonged to a hapū ‘subtribe’ or whānau ‘extended family’, and that some modern meeting houses, especially in the cities, have been built for groups that are not tribal, including schools and universities. Te Ara’s account of Māori architecture names urban marae built around a new meeting house and dining hall, among them Te Puea marae in South Auckland (1965) and Hoani Waititi marae in West Auckland (1980). In English the plural is simply marae, not maraes, as Māori words in New Zealand English explains, and naming your own marae is one line of a pepeha.

The parts of a marae, labelled

The parts of a marae, seen from above. This is a simplified general layout, not a plan of any real marae: every marae is different, and the buildings, seating and gateway can sit in other places. Free to print for a school project.

Part	Te Aka’s meaning	What it is for
waharoa, also tomokanga	gateway, main entranceway; entrance, portal	Visitors gather here before they are called on. The University of Auckland calls it the gateway to the marae ātea.
marae ātea	courtyard, public forum: the open area in front of the wharenui where formal welcomes take place and issues are debated	The welcome and the speeches. Auckland describes it as the forecourt between the gateway and the meeting house.
paepae	orators’ bench	Where the speakers sit: Te Ara calls it the front row on a marae, where elders who are experts sit as speakers.
wharenui	meeting house, large house: the main building of a marae, where guests are accommodated	Speeches after the welcome, meetings, and where visitors sleep.
wharekai, also whare kai	dining hall	The meal that ends a welcome, and every meal after it.
wharepaku, also whare paku	toilet	Te Ara calls the toilets and showers the ablutions block, and notes they are a building marae did not have before European settlement.

The marae ātea: the courtyard

Te Ara explains that the marae ātea, the space outside the front of the meeting house, is the domain of Tūmatauenga, the atua of war, and that speeches made there are allowed to be forceful; the meeting house is the domain of Rongo, the atua of peace, where speeches are expected to be more conciliatory. Te Aka says the same of the courtyard: it is the right place to raise contentious issues. Because the two sides speak to each other across it, the open space matters as much as the buildings. Massey University notes that when a welcome is held somewhere that is not a marae, chairs for the visitors and the hosts are set out across a space, and the space in the middle stands for the ātea.

The paepae: two meanings

Paepae has two meanings on a marae, and both appear on labelled diagrams. Te Aka gives the orators’ bench, the seats of the speakers, which is the sense Te Ara uses when it says that expert elders sit on the paepae of the marae as speakers. Te Aka also gives the door sill, the front threshold of a meeting house, and that is the paepae on the second diagram below: the beam along the front of the porch. When a worksheet asks for the paepae, check which one it means.

The wharenui: the meeting house

The meeting house has several names. Te Aka gives wharenui, large house; whare tupuna and whare tipuna, ancestral house, the two spellings being the western and eastern forms of the word for ancestor; and whare whakairo, carved house, which is what Te Ara calls the elaborately decorated kind. Te Ara describes it as typically a single large room with a pitched roof that extends past the front wall to form an open porch, and says it keeps a single door and window in the front wall. Many are named after ancestors, which is the subject of the next section.

The wharekai: the dining hall

Te Ara’s account of Māori architecture says that permanent dining halls were a new kind of building in the twentieth century. A state-funded school of Māori arts and crafts, which opened in Rotorua in 1927 after Āpirana Ngata lobbied for it, took commissions to build carved meeting houses and dining halls together. Because a dining hall is associated with food, Te Ara says, it was noa ‘free from tapu, ordinary’, and its decoration was freer than a meeting house’s. Te Aka adds that wharekai can also mean a café or a restaurant.

The urupā: the cemetery

You will hear one more word around a marae: urupā, which Te Aka defines as burial ground, cemetery, graveyard. Te Ara explains that a tangihanga ‘funeral, rites for the dead’ ends with burial at the urupā, that most urupā have water at the entrance, and that people wash their hands as they leave to remove tapu. It is not on the diagram because it is not a building of the marae itself. What to say to a grieving family is in condolences in Māori.

The parts of a wharenui, labelled

The front of a meeting house is where most of the named parts are, and the parts that school worksheets ask you to label. Here they are on one drawing:

The front of a wharenui. A simplified drawing of the parts most houses share: real houses differ in their carving, their proportions and where the door and window sit, and many have no carving at all.

Part	Te Aka’s meaning	Part of the ancestor
tekoteko	carved figure on the gable of a meeting house	the founding or named ancestor (Te Ara, Te Papa)
koruru	carved face on the gable, often the ancestor the house is named after	the face or head (Te Ara, Te Papa)
maihi	bargeboards: the facing boards on the gable	the arms (Te Ara, Te Papa)
raparapa	the projecting carved ends of the maihi	the fingers (Te Papa)
amo	upright supports of the lower ends of the maihi	the legs (Te Papa)
mahau	porch, verandah	—
pare	lintel, carved slab over the door	—
tatau, also kūwaha	door	the mouth (Te Ara); the doorway into the body (Te Papa)
matapihi	window	—
paepae	door sill, front threshold of a meeting house	—
tāhuhu	ridge pole	the spine or backbone (Te Ara, Te Papa)
heke	rafter	the ribs (Te Ara, Te Papa)

The ridge pole and the rafters are not on the drawing because they run back from the front, inside the roof. Inside the house you will also see the poupou ‘carved wall figures, wall posts’ around the walls, panels of tukutuku ‘ornamental lattice-work’ between them, painted kōwhaiwhai ‘painted scroll ornamentation’ on the rafters, and the pou tokomanawa ‘centre pole supporting the ridge pole’. Each gloss there is Te Aka’s.

The meeting house is an ancestor

Te Ara’s account of Māori architecture says that many carved meeting houses are named after ancestors and that the building is regarded as an outstretched body: the koruru is the ancestor’s face, the maihi the arms, the door the mouth, the tāhuhu the spine and the heke the ribs. Te Papa, describing its own meeting house, adds the raparapa as the outstretched fingers and the amo as the legs. So when you walk through the door, you are entering the body of the ancestor, and the rafters above you are the ribs.

This is why a speaker can greet the house as a person. Te Ara gives the words an orator is likely to begin with: E te whare e tū mai nei, tēnā koe ‘I greet the meeting house standing before us’. The carved figures, it says, are personifications of people and not just representations of them.

The house carries the creation story too. Te Ara explains that the floor of the meeting house stands for Papatūānuku, the earth mother, the roof for Ranginui, the sky father, and the building itself for Tāne, who separated them, in the phrase Tāne whakapiripiri, Tāne who draws people together. Te Ara adds that the back of the house is generally regarded as the ancestral past and the front as the present and future, and that the front is situated to face the east, the direction of Hawaiki and the sunrise.

Inside, the two sides have names and uses. Te Aka defines tara nui as the floor space on the right on entering, where visitors sleep, and kopa iti as the floor space on the left, normally where the local people sit or sleep. Te Ara’s etiquette page says only that certain parts of the house are reserved, so ask before you put your bedding down.

Where the accounts differ

Labels differ between worksheets because the sources differ. These are the points on which reputable sources do not say the same thing; none of them is wrong.

Point	What the sources say
Which carving is the ancestor	Te Ara calls the koruru the face of the ancestor, and Te Aka says the koruru often represents the ancestor the house is named after. Te Ara also says that, used to teach whakapapa, the tekoteko is the founding ancestor; Te Papa calls its tekoteko the ancestor the house is named for and its koruru the ancestor’s head.
The door	The door is the ancestor’s mouth (Te Ara, which calls it the kūwaha); the doorway into the body (Te Papa, which calls it the tatau). Te Aka gives both words for door.
Mahau and roro	Te Aka defines both mahau and roro as the porch or verandah. Te Papa uses mahau for the porch between the amo and roro for the entrance wall of the house behind it.
Paepae	The speakers’ bench (Te Aka, Te Ara), or the threshold beam at the front of the porch (Te Aka, Te Ara). Both senses are in use.
Wharepaku	Te Ara writes it as one word; Te Aka lists both wharepaku and whare paku.

Visiting a marae: what to do in each part

The ceremony of welcome, step by step, is in pōwhiri explained. This is the short version, part by part, from Te Ara’s basic marae etiquette and the University of Auckland’s and Massey University’s guides. Every marae has its own kawa ‘marae protocol’, and Te Ara’s best advice is to ask the local people what they expect.

At the waharoa: wait with your group. Te Ara says you do not just walk onto a marae; you need to be welcomed on.
On the marae ātea: do not walk in front of a speaker (Te Ara) or through the space between the visitors and the hosts (Massey). Once at your seats, stay standing until a host speaker indicates you may sit (Auckland).
At the wharenui: take your shoes off at the door, do not eat or drink inside, do not step over people and do not sit on pillows (Te Ara).
In the wharekai: wash your hands first, let elders go first, wait for the karakia, do not pass food over anyone’s head and do not sit on the tables (Te Ara).
Leaving an urupā: wash your hands (Te Ara).
Anywhere: ask before taking photographs; Te Ara says some marae do not allow photographs, filming or recording without permission.

Most of the words on this page, and the grammar to put them together, are in the free te reo Māori course, one lesson a day.