Daigoji Temple

Daigoji was founded in 874 and is widely known for the vast cherry-blossom party Toyotomi Hideyoshi held here in 1598. Its five-storey pagoda, heavy and settled in its proportions, is a National Treasure and the oldest wooden building in Kyoto Prefecture, raised in 951. The main hall, also a National Treasure, was moved here from Yuasa in Kishu — modern Wakayama — on Hideyoshi's orders and completed in 1600, under his son Hideyori. The temple divides into a lower precinct and an upper one on the mountain, with more than eighty halls, pagodas and monks' quarters scattered between them: give it a full day if you want to see it properly.