Before Tokyo there was Naniwa — Japan's first capital and its merchant engine. Three days trace Prince Shotoku's temple of 593, Hideyoshi's siege-scarred castle, a keyhole tomb visible from space, and the Edo streets and 1945 ruins that shaped the modern city.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi began this castle in 1583; Tokugawa forces levelled it in the 1615 Summer Siege. The current keep is a 1931 concrete reconstruction with eight floors of Toyotomi armour, painted screens and siege maps.
Founded by Prince Shotoku in 593, Japan's oldest officially administered temple. The five-storey pagoda keeps the original Asuka-period axial layout and can be climbed; the Gokuraku-jodo garden follows Heian paradise design.
Osaka's oldest shrine, tied to a founding legend of 211 AD and rebuilt every generation in sumiyoshi-zukuri style: straight gabled roofs, no Chinese influence, four halls lined up like ships putting out to sea.
The keyhole-shaped mound attributed to Emperor Nintoku runs 486m long — the largest tomb on earth by footprint, inscribed by UNESCO in 2019. The interior stays sealed, so you circle the triple moats on foot.
Ten floors descend through time, from a full-scale reconstruction of the Naniwa Palace throne hall of 652 AD to Taisho-era shopfronts and tram interiors. The basement preserves excavated palace storehouse pillar holes under glass.
Documents the eight US air raids of 1945 that burned out a third of Osaka and killed more than 10,000 people, using charred household objects, incendiary bomb casings and recorded survivor testimony from the Joto district.
Shinsekai was laid out in 1912 on the grounds of the 1903 national exposition, its western half modelled on Paris. The 103m tower was scrapped for wartime metal and rebuilt in 1956, still guarding the Billiken luck idol of 1912.
The red-brick Central Public Hall (1918) was funded by stockbroker Iwamoto Einosuke, who lost his fortune and took his life before it opened. It stands beside Tatsuno Kingo's 1903 Bank of Japan branch and the 1904 prefectural library.
An entire Edo-period Osaka street of the 1830s rebuilt indoors at full scale — merchant houses, bathhouse, pharmacy, fire-watch tower — with ceiling lighting cycling through dawn, dusk and a thunderstorm. Upper floors cover 1868 to 1970.
Founded in 949 where pines were said to have sprouted overnight for the exiled scholar Sugawara no Michizane. It anchors the Tenjin Matsuri, running since 951 and now Japan's third-largest festival, held every 24-25 July.
The 1838 school of Dutch medicine run by physician Ogata Koan, housed in the only surviving Edo merchant townhouse of its kind in Osaka. Students slept in a cramped attic and fought over one Dutch dictionary; Fukuzawa Yukichi trained here.
Two flagstone alleys barely wide enough for one person, lined with 60 tiny bars, wrap around Hozen-ji temple. Its Fudo Myoo statue has been so drenched by water offerings since 1637 that it now wears a thick coat of green moss.