En un regard
Le château en bref
Saga Castle grew out of the enlargement of Muranaka Castle, the former residence of the Ryūzōji, by their one-time vassals the Nabeshima. The main works, begun in 1608, were completed in 1611, the year Katsushige took up residence in the honmaru. It is a plains castle about eight hundred meters on each side, protected by moats reaching some seventy-two meters in width, a system that earned it the nickname of "sunken castle," since flooding the approaches was meant to halt an attacker. Two fires shaped its fate. That of 1726 destroyed the five-story keep, never rebuilt, and led to the administration being refocused on the ninomaru. That of 1835, which in turn ravaged the ninomaru, prompted Nabeshima Naomasa to rebuild a honmaru combining government and residence. From this program survives the Shachi Gate, a gate with an upper story extended by an adjoining tower, crowned by two bronze fish weighing about two hundred kilograms each and still marked by bullets from the Saga War of 1874. The honmaru museum, opened in 2004, recreates in wood part of the nineteenth-century palace on its original site, drawing on excavations and the old plan of the honmaru, over some 2,500 square meters, and returns the original audience hall to its place. The stone foundations survive beneath the building, which was designed to spare them.
