Itsukushima Jinja Gojūnotō

This guide to the five-story pagoda at Itsukushima Shrine near Hiroshima opens with a puzzle that took nineteen-seventies engineers by surprise: built without any written theory, these towers keep surviving earthquakes that flatten everything around them. It traces the pagoda back to 1407, raised as a Buddhist hall for the healing buddha Yakushi Nyorai, before Meiji-era officials split Buddhism from Shinto and folded it into the shrine below. Look up at the vermilion railings and the freestanding central pillar as you take in the view of the bay.