Kaneiji

Founded in the early seventeenth century as a guardian temple protecting the shogunate's capital from the northeast, this Tendai temple once sprawled across the entire hill now occupied by Ueno Park. Its main precincts were largely destroyed in a decisive nineteenth-century battle, but a rebuilt main hall, an ornate mausoleum gate for the shoguns, and a surviving pagoda recall its former grandeur. Quiet and often overlooked amid the park's museums, it offers a reflective walk among old cedars and the tombs of several rulers of Japan.