Tokyo

35.6762°N, 139.6503°E.

Capital of Japan, originally a fishing village called Edo until Tokugawa Ieyasu made it the seat of his shogunate in 1603. By 1721 Edo was the largest city in the world with over one million residents — a position it traded back and forth with London and Beijing for two centuries. The city has been destroyed twice in living memory: the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake (140,000 dead) and the March 1945 firebombing (100,000 dead in one night, the most destructive single bombing raid in human history). Tokyo Skytree (2012, 634 m) is the tallest tower in the world; the height in metres encodes the historical name of the region (Musashi: mu=6, sa=3, shi=4). The Imperial Palace at the center of the city occupies the grounds of Edo Castle (1457); its inner garden is closed to the public except on January 2 and December 23. Tokyo is the largest metropolitan area in human history, with 37 million people in the greater region.

The world's largest city has been destroyed twice in living memory, and at the center is a forbidden garden visible only twice a year.