Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara
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How it came to be
Nara was the capital of Japan from 710 to 784. The Heijō palace at the northern end of the city covered 120 hectares, its site chosen by Chinese geomantic principles, and the city plan followed Chinese models such as Chang'an. The listing has eight parts: the palace site, five temples (Tōdai-ji, Kōfuku-ji, Yakushi-ji, Gangō-ji and Tōshōdai-ji), the Kasuga shrine and the Kasugayama Primeval Forest, with 78 buildings in all.
Emperor Shōmu ordered a great Buddha in 743, and work moved to Nara in 745. At the eye-opening ceremony in 752 the Indian monk Bodhisena painted in the eyes, and 10,000 monks are said to have attended. The present Great Buddha Hall was finished in 1709 and measures 57 m wide, 50 m deep and 49 m high, about 30 per cent smaller than the hall before it.
Hunting and tree-felling have been banned in the Kasugayama forest since 841, keeping it as a sacred wood. Repairs to the buildings began in the late 1890s, after the Ancient Shrines and Temples Preservation Law of 1897. Excavation of the palace site has continued since 1959, and in 2008 it became part of a national government park. The monuments were inscribed as a World Heritage site in 1998.
Travellers who came here
- 1878-11
In a drizzle she walked in the forest on the hill by the Kasuga shrine, where the sacred deer begged for cakes. She saw the wooden Shōsōin storehouse and marvelled that it and its eighth-century treasures had survived a thousand years.
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