Nagoya's history runs from the Kusanagi sword at Atsuta to Nobunaga's birthplace, the Owari Tokugawa treasury and the 1945 air raids that erased 25% of the city. This three-day route follows that arc through castles, shrines, archives and rebuilt quarters.
Founded 113 CE around the Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi, one of Japan's three imperial regalia, never shown publicly. The Treasure Hall displays over 6,000 artefacts including national-treasure swords; open 09:00–16:30, closed the last Wed/Thu monthly.
Eel house operating since 1873 in a wooden machiya beside the shrine, where the hitsumabushi serving method was reportedly devised for delivery orders. Sets run ¥4,500–5,500; queues form before opening at 11:30.
Ieyasu ordered 20 daimyo to build this 1612 fortress; the palace's reconstructed cypress halls reopened in 2018 with reproduced Kano-school screens. The keep is closed for earthquake work, so the palace and stone walls are the draw.
The second-bailey garden holds tea houses and the marked stones each clan dragged here, including Kato Kiyomasa's boulder hauled from Nagoya port. Signboards show the clan crests carved to prove which lord supplied which block.
Built inside Toyoda Sakichi's 1911 red-brick loom works, where the family moved from textiles into cars in 1933. Working looms are demonstrated by staff hourly; the metalworking hall runs a live aluminium pour. Open 09:30–17:00, closed Mondays.
A modest monument marking the March–May 1945 raids that burned roughly a quarter of the city and killed some 8,000 people. Nearby stones list ward-by-ward casualties, and the shrine itself was rebuilt from ash in the 1950s.
The Owari Tokugawa house treasury: armour, tea utensils and the 12th-century Genji Monogatari Emaki scrolls, shown in facsimile except for a short annual airing each November. Open 10:00–17:00, closed Mondays.
The 1981 original branch of the peppered-tebasaki chain born in postwar Nagoya's cheap-protein drinking culture, when chicken wings were the discarded cut. Wings run about ¥600 per five; open until 00:30.
A 1922 Taisho-era brick courthouse, one of the few central buildings to survive 1945, preserving its courtroom, jury room and stained glass. Free entry, open 09:00–17:00, closed Mondays and the third Thursday.
A grid of Edo timber warehouses laid out in 1700 after a fire, when streets were widened to four ken. Rooftop yane-shinmei shrines still sit above the storehouses along the Horikawa canal Ieyasu dug to supply the castle.
The 1904 porcelain works that exported dinnerware to America and switched to wartime ceramics before rebuilding. Six red-brick kiln chimneys still stand; the Craft Center shows the full 15-stage bone-china process on the original floors.
The temple was moved here by Ieyasu in 1612 from Gifu; its Shinpukuji library holds the oldest surviving Kojiki manuscript, copied in 1371. The arcades that grew around it became Nagoya's postwar black-market and electronics district.