Kishiwada Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

Tradition holds that Wada Takaie, a supporter of Kusunoki Masashige, built a first fortress on the site around 1334 in the locality of Kishi, which gave rise to the name Kishiwada; its location and form remain unknown. After him, the Hosokawa, the Miyoshi and the Matsura held an enclosure with neither stone nor towers. Everything changed from 1585, when Koide Hidemasa, uncle of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, took possession of the site and built a five-storey keep, completed in 1597. The layout was further expanded under Okabe Nobukatsu, who arrived in 1640 and whose family remained in place for thirteen generations, until the Meiji era. Lightning destroyed the keep in 1827, and it was not rebuilt; in 1871, the towers and gates were dismantled. What remains are the moats and walls, combining fragile Izumi sandstone with granite laid during repairs carried out after 1675. The present building, three storeys high, was erected in 1954 thanks to donations from local residents; it is a modern creation, lower than the original, and some authors describe it as a mock keep, others as a reconstructed keep. In front of it lies the Garden of the Eight Formations, designed by Shigemori Mirei in 1953 on the former central redoubt, and it has been designated a Place of Scenic Beauty of national importance since 2014.