Heijō Palace Site Historical Park
Vast excavated capital grounds where wooden trash-pit tablets outlasted the imperial halls above them.
This guide to Heijo Palace Site Historical Park in Nara starts with an empty field that once held the imperial court, seat of Japan's emperor from 710 to 784, and almost nothing survives of it in wood or stone. It follows the 1959 excavation that instead turned up the palace's garbage, including a single pit holding over 1,800 wooden tablets, and asks how a bureaucrat's discarded paperwork could outlast a throne room. You'll hear what those scraps, from rice requisitions to a scribe's leftover homework, reveal about daily life at court. The rebuilt Suzaku Gate ahead is a 2010 reconstruction, not original.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.