Nijo Castle (二条城), Kyoto, Japan - part 2. Honmaru palace
This second part of my blog posts on Nijo castle is about the Honmaru palace. Surrounded by the inner moat, there are the Honmaru palace, the Honmaru garden, and the donjon (tower) that you can climb up to enjoy the view from a high place.
Unlike the Ninomaru palace, you cannot enter this palace and you can only admire it from the outside.
Next to the Honmaru palace, you can find the Honmaru garden. The original Honmaru garden was lost during the fire, together with the buildings, so the Honmaru garden you see right now, is from 1896. It was constructed in the middle of the Meiji period, when gardens were made with Western, hill and grass style, influences. You can find fields of grass, curved garden paths, stone lanterns, large garden rocks, and stone staircases (source).
Honmaru palace
Originally, the Honmaru palace was similar to the Ninomaru palace, with beautiful sliding door paintings from the Kano school. But due to a lightning strike, a five-storied castle tower was lost, and the Great fire of Kyoto city in 1788 wiped the whole Honmaru palace out. The Honmaru palace that you can now find there is the old Katsura-no-miya palace, which was moved there from the Kyoto Imperial Palace grounds. When the Kyoto Imperial Palace burned down in 1854, it was lucky that a part of the Kyoto Imperial Palace was able to escape the fire (source).Unlike the Ninomaru palace, you cannot enter this palace and you can only admire it from the outside.
Honmaru garden
Next to the Honmaru palace, you can find the Honmaru garden. The original Honmaru garden was lost during the fire, together with the buildings, so the Honmaru garden you see right now, is from 1896. It was constructed in the middle of the Meiji period, when gardens were made with Western, hill and grass style, influences. You can find fields of grass, curved garden paths, stone lanterns, large garden rocks, and stone staircases (source).
Inner moat
I had already shown you the wide outer moat of Nijo castle in this blog post, but the inner moat is just as impressive. To reach Honmaru palace, you need to cross a small bridge in the front and in the back, there is another bridge. It seems like an escape route for when you are under siege and you have no other option, but to leave the palace to stay alive. Conveniently, the West gate exit (Nishi-mon) is very close by (source).
I was very surprised to find so many koi carps in the moat.
Donjon (tower)
This was the most fun part of the Honmaru palace. You get to climb up and enjoy the view from there. It almost made me feel like a watch tower guard and I was trying to see if there are any enemies approaching.
To give you an idea of how beautiful the view is, I took a panorama picture of the Honmaru palace.
Click to enlarge
