Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara

Before Kyoto there was Nara, Japan's capital from 710 to 784 and the crucible in which the young state took shape. The Great Buddha of Todai-ji still sits in one of the world's largest wooden halls, deer wander the parkland around Kasuga Taisha, and the excavated Nara Palace site maps the vanished imperial court. UNESCO inscribed these monuments of the 8th-century capital in 1998, a World Heritage snapshot of Japan's formative age.