Glover Garden

Glover Garden is an open-air museum spread across a steep hillside above Nagasaki harbour, gathering some of the finest Western-style residences built during the city's remarkable era as Japan's window on the world. In the second half of the nineteenth century, as Japan reopened to foreign trade after centuries of isolation, Nagasaki became a hub for merchants, engineers and diplomats from Britain, the Netherlands and beyond, and they built elegant colonial-style homes on the slopes overlooking the port. Several of these historic houses, some in their original locations and others relocated for preservation, now form this beautifully landscaped garden.

The garden takes its name from Thomas Blake Glover, a Scottish merchant who arrived in Nagasaki as a young man and became one of the most influential foreigners in Japan's modernisation. Glover traded in tea, ships and arms, helped bring the first steam locomotive and modern dry dock to Japan, and supported the young reformers who would go on to topple the shogunate and drive the Meiji Restoration. His former home, the Glover House, is the oldest surviving Western-style wooden building in Japan, a graceful bungalow with wide verandas and a bungalow roof, and it anchors the garden both physically and historically.

Wandering the terraced paths, visitors pass a collection of restored mansions furnished in period style, with exhibits on the foreign community, the shipbuilding and industrial ventures they seeded, and the cross-cultural life of nineteenth-century Nagasaki. Interspersed among the houses are manicured gardens, fountains, ponds and seasonal flowers, and everywhere the views open out over the harbour, the cranes of the Mitsubishi shipyards and the hills of the city beyond. The garden is often linked in the popular imagination with Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly, and a statue and themed corners play on that romantic association.

The experience is relaxed and scenic, and although the site is built on a hillside, a series of outdoor escalators and moving walkways carries visitors up the slope, making it far more accessible than its terrain suggests, and the downhill walk back through the houses is gentle. Most people spend around ninety minutes exploring the buildings, gardens and viewpoints. A cafe and shop provide refreshment, and English information is good throughout.

Glover Garden is rewarding year-round. Spring brings cherry and other blossoms to the terraces, while in certain seasons the garden stays open into the evening for illuminations, when the houses and paths are lit and the harbour glitters below, creating a romantic atmosphere. Combined with the neighbouring Oura Church and the nearby Dutch Slope, it forms the heart of Nagasaki's foreign-settlement quarter.

A notable point is how Glover Garden embodies Nagasaki's singular role in Japanese history. For more than two centuries, when the rest of Japan was closed to the outside world, Nagasaki was the sole gateway for trade with Europe and China, and after the reopening it became a laboratory of modernisation. The houses on this hillside are monuments to that exchange, and to the individuals, like Glover, who helped steer Japan into the modern age.

The best time to visit is late afternoon, when the harbour light is soft, or evening during illumination seasons. Reach it by taking tram line 5 to the Oura Cathedral stop and walking about seven minutes uphill. For its history, its architecture and its sweeping views over one of Japan's most storied ports, Glover Garden is a Nagasaki essential.