Heianjingu

Heian Jingu announces itself with a 24.4-metre torii you have to tilt your head back to take in, then leads you up the approach to halls that breathe the colour of the old imperial court. It looks ancient but isn't: it was built in 1895 for the 1100th anniversary of Kyoto's founding as the capital. The vermilion-and-green shrine buildings reproduce the main government hall of the original Heian palace at five-eighths scale. Around them, roughly 30,000 square metres of Shin'en gardens — a nationally designated scenic site — run through weeping cherries in spring, irises and water lilies in early summer, maples in autumn. A quarter of that area is water, and the gardens took twenty years to plant.