Himeji-jo

White walls and layered gables rising like a bird taking flight earned Himeji-jo its nickname, the White Heron Castle. Completed in the early 1600s at the dawn of the shogunate era and never destroyed by war, fire or earthquake, the fortress preserves 83 buildings with labyrinthine baileys, gates and defensive traps designed to bewilder attackers. UNESCO inscribed it in 1993 as the supreme surviving statement of Japanese castle architecture in wood and plaster.