Nijo Castle

The castle was completed in 1603 by Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first shogun of the Tokugawa dynasty, and he came here to announce his appointment to the feudal lords. In 1626 Emperor Go-Mizunoo stayed here for five days, and ahead of the visit the castle was expanded to its current size. On 13 October 1867 the last shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, gathered the representatives of 40 domains in the great hall of Ninomaru Palace, and the next day he announced that he was returning power to the emperor. So the castle saw both the beginning of Tokugawa rule and its end.

Ninomaru Palace is six connected buildings from the early Edo period, and it is a National Treasure. According to the castle, it is the only castle palace in Japan that has survived almost intact. Inside there are more than 3,600 wall paintings of the Kano school, 1,016 of them Important Cultural Properties, and in the first waiting rooms tigers are painted on a gold background, so guests would understand right away who the master of the house was. The corridor floor chirps like a nightingale when you walk on it. According to the castle, the sound comes from clamps rubbing against nails, and the story that the floor was built to warn of assassins is a common mistake.

Honmaru Palace, in the center of the complex, is a palace of a branch of the imperial family that was moved here in 1893 and 1894 from the Imperial Palace grounds. After a thorough renovation it opened to the public in September 2024, for the first time in 18 years. The whole complex covers about 275 thousand square meters, with a perimeter of about 2 km.