Ginkaku-ji

At the Silver Pavilion there is no silver, and there never was: the famous story that a shogun meant to sheathe it in silver leaf is a legend invented long after his death. What stands is quieter and stranger: two storeys of plain dark wood in the eastern hills of Kyoto, and a tiny four-and-a-half-mat room where the Japanese tea room was, in effect, born. The last work of the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa, who withdrew here in the 15th century.