Shugakuinrikyu

Shugakuin Rikyu is a mountain villa built between 1655 and 1659, said to have been designed by Retired Emperor Go-Mizunoo himself. Across grounds of roughly 540,000 square metres stand three separate villas — upper, middle and lower — each conceived differently, and each worth the walk. Set among the surrounding fields, the composition holds courtly refinement and rural ease in the same frame, and the result is a garden of real scale and beauty.