Toyotomi Stone Wall Museum

This guide to the Toyotomi Stone Wall Museum in Osaka opens with a scorch mark on the stone in front of you, left when Tokugawa forces stormed the castle Toyotomi Hideyoshi built and defended his heir and Lady Yodo here in 1615. It follows what the victors did next, burying the entire castle under meters of packed earth and building their own on top, so that for centuries nobody standing here knew the original wall was still down there. Drilling surveys in the 1950s and an old map found in 1960 were the first signs something lay beneath the modern foundations.