Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims
Underground memorial hall lined with a one-hundred-forty-thousand-tile panorama, one tile for each life lost.
This guide to the Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims walks you down its spiraling underground ramp, timed to end at one specific moment: August 6, 1945, 8:15 in the morning. At the bottom, a circular hall lined with ceramic tiles turns that morning into a single wraparound panorama, and a fountain shaped like a clock face marks why survivors so often returned, in memory, to the need for water. It traces why the memorial hall settled on tiles as its unit of scale, when no other number could hold it. Stand at the center of the circular hall, where the light off the tiles is strongest, before you continue upstairs.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.