Heian-jingū Shrine

This guide to Heian-jingu Shrine in Kyoto starts in 1868, when the emperor and imperial court left for Tokyo and the city began emptying out, looking less like a capital and more like a museum nobody visited. You'll hear how Kyoto answered in 1895 by building a scaled replica of Emperor Kanmu's long-vanished palace, and about the landscape architect Ogawa Jihei, who spent two decades shaping the garden behind it. Walk under the towering torii and look for the traces of a 1976 fire that struck the complex a second blow.