The future of Christchurch's most famous landmark hangs in the balance following an announcement that the city's 19th-century cathedral will be deconsecrated and partially demolished.
ChristChurch Cathedral suffered structural damage, including the collapse of its steeple, when a 6.3-magnitude quake struck the city on New Zealand's South Island on 22 February, killing 181 people, leaving much of the central business district in rubble and destroying up to 30,000 houses.
Church and government representatives on Friday announced that sections of the cathedral would be demolished, at a cost of about NZ $4m (£2m), in order to carry out repairs to make other parts of the structure safe and to enable investigation into the longer term viability of the building.
The Anglican cathedral, designed in George Gilbert Scott's distinctive Gothic style, has long been a tourist destination in Christchurch, but since February the building has been part of a cordon encircling the city centre, and so inaccessible to the public.
The cathedral will be deconsecrated, making it secular, before demolition work begins.
In a statement, the bishop of Christchurch, Victoria Matthews, described the "difficult decision" as a necessary step towards determining "the future of the cathedral, which will combine the old and the new".
Matthews confirmed that there were no plans to construct a "replica" of the cathedral. Whatever could be restored of the existing building would be strengthened and augmented by newly designed structures, she added.
There remains the possibility of the entire cathedral being felled and replaced.
Among the proposals under consideration for a new cathedral is a design by the Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, which would see a new structure, seating 700 people, built from shipping containers, cardboard, paper and glass.
The ChristChurch announcement came as about 6,500 homes that had faced possible condemnation were given a reprieve by authorities. The homes were reclassified from the "orange zone" to the "green zone", meaning they can be rebuilt or repaired.
More than 1,500 homes remain in the orange zone, with home owners still waiting for a ruling on the viability of their land. The Canterbury earthquake recovery minister, Gerry Brownlee, said he was confident that the affected homeowners would learn the fate of their properties by Christmas.
In the first official estimation of the impact of the disaster on Christchurch's population, Statistics New Zealand this week said that about 10,600 people had left the city since the first of a series of large earthquakes struck the region in September 2010.