Suzakumon Gate, Heijo Palace Site

Introduction

Suzakumon was the main gate of the palace, not of the whole capital. After the court moved to Heijo-kyo in 710, the emperor's residence and government offices formed a walled compound roughly a square kilometre across, and Rajomon was the city's outer gate. Today's vermilion gate was reconstructed in 1998 at about 25 metres wide and 20 metres tall, with a double hip-and-gable roof, after long excavation and architectural study: the podium and pillar positions came from archaeology, while details that could not be recovered were inferred from the contemporary Chumon gate at Horyu-ji and the East Pagoda of Yakushi-ji. In the same year the palace site joined the UNESCO 'Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara', and the largest hall, the First Daigokuden, was rebuilt in 2010. Suzaku-oji, the avenue running south from the gate, was about 70 metres wide and stretched 3.7 kilometres to Rajomon between a grid of city blocks; New Year receptions for foreign envoys and the utagaki song gatherings took place on the plaza before the gate, now laid out as Suzakumon Square. Six-metre earthen walls on either side give a sense of the enclosure, and from under the gate the Daigokuden sits exactly on the axis north. One odd sight belongs to this site alone: a Kintetsu railway line crosses the park, so trains pass beside the reconstructed buildings. The gate, halls and grounds are free, closed only on Mondays and over New Year, while the lawns outside stay open; the twenty-minute walk from Yamato-Saidaiji conveys the scale better than the bus.

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