No trip to Tokyo could be complete without a visit to the Imperial Palace, and that was where I went on my second day in the city. It did not take a long time because only a few selected parts of the palace grounds are open to visitors.
For hundreds of years, until the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the Emperor resided in the old imperial capital of Kyoto. Tokyo, which was then known as Edo, was the seat of the Tokugawa shoguns, who resided in Edo Castle. With the ouster of the shogunate in 1868, the Emperor moved to Edo Castle, which became the new Imperial Palace.
The Meiji-era palace buildings were mostly destroyed by bombing in World War II, and new structures were constructed in the 1960s.
