Silver Pavilion (Ginkaku-ji)

Kyoto, Japan

Ginkaku-ji (1483), today a Rinzai Zen temple, was the Kyoto palace of Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa (1436-1490), grandson of Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu who built the Golden Pavilion. The Silver Pavilion itself is just one building of what was then a huge villa-palace complex. Later neglected but never destroyed, the present pavilion is the fifteenth-century original, now restored to its pristine state.