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Originally a Maori settlement, Dunedin was first discovered by European whalers in the early 1800s. By 1848 a group of Scottish pioneers settled here, escaping religious persecution in their homeland and was given the name "Dunedin" which is the Gaelic word for Edinburgh. With the discovery of gold in 1861, thousands of prospectors arrived, and the township more than doubled to 5,000 residents. The rapid growth of the region around the turn of the century left Dunedin with the largest concentration of Victorian and Edwardian buildings outside Britain. With more than 120,000 inhabitants, it is presumably the best-preserved Victorian city in the world. Dunedin is also the home to New Zealand's oldest university, the University of Otago.
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