Nagoya Castle

Nagoya Castle is a Japanese castle in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, built between 1610 and 1612 on the order of Tokugawa Ieyasu, who assigned roughly twenty feudal lords to the project under the direction of the master builder Nakai Masakiyo, replacing an earlier Sengoku period stronghold of the Oda clan. It served as the seat of the Owari Domain, one of the most important branches of the Tokugawa house, throughout the Edo period. The castle connected keep design joins a five story main keep to a smaller two level keep by a bridge, its roofline marked by a pair of golden shachi, mythical dolphin headed creatures, above fan sloped stone walls credited to the engineer Kato Kiyomasa, and the Honmaru Palace within the walls once held more than thirty rooms decorated with sliding door paintings by artists of the Kano school. American bombing destroyed much of the castle in May 1945, and the keeps were rebuilt in 1959 using modern materials, while the Honmaru Palace was reconstructed between 2009 and 2018 using traditional techniques. Owned by the city of Nagoya, it has operated as a museum and public historical site since 1931.