Gifu Castle

This castle was built in 1509 on top of Mount Kinka at 338 meters. This location was very important to the Japanese because it was very close to a mountain pass where trade routes connected the east and west sides of Japan. The Gifu Castle was not the first castle on these grounds; in 1201, an earlier castle named Inabayama was built by Nikaido Yukimasa. In 1539, Saito Dosan came into control of the castle and redesigned it. The grandson of Dosan, Saito Yoshitatsu lost the castle to Oda Nobunaga in September of 1567. Nobunaga then gave it its Gifu name.

When Louis Frois, a Portuguese missionary, came to visit Japan, he came to see Oda Nobunaga at the Gifu Castle. He was very impressed with its design. He wrote down that there were five gardens on the castle grounds with numerous ponds. On the first floor of the castle, there were around twenty rooms and the paintings on the gold screens were absolutely beautiful. From the third and fourth floors of the castle, the entire city could be seen. It was one of the great points of the yamajiro location.