Kinkaku-ji

Doubled in the still pond, it looks like one golden building, but look again, floor by floor, and the Golden Pavilion of Kinkaku-ji turns out to be three. A bare-wood aristocrat's palace at the base, a gilded warrior's hall above it, a Chinese-style Zen chapel crowned by a golden phoenix at the top, stacked on one lakeside retreat by a retired shogun. A young monk set fire to it in 1950; what you see rose again five years later.