Glover Garden & Oura Cathedral (Historic Foreign Settlement & UNESCO World Heritage)

Category: Colonial Foreign Settlements, Meiji Mansions & World Heritage Churches | Location: 7-min walk from Oura Tenshudo Tram Stop (Line 5). The scenic Glover Skyroad inclined elevator offers barrier-free access directly to the upper gate.

Perched gracefully on the lush hillside of Minamiyamate overlooking the maritime panorama of Nagasaki Harbor, **Glover Garden** (*Gurabā-en*) is an open-air architectural sanctuary celebrating Japan's dynamic opening to foreign trade in the late Edo and Meiji eras. The crown jewel of the estate is the **Former Glover House**, constructed in 1863 by Scottish merchant entrepreneur Thomas Blake Glover. Inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site under Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution, it stands as the oldest surviving Western-style wooden residence in Japan, ingeniously combining an airy British colonial bungalow design with traditional Japanese roof tiles and cedar joinery. Thomas Glover played a titanic role in propelling Japan into the modern industrial age: he supplied modern firearms and warships to visionary samurai reformists like Sakamoto Ryoma, co-founded the Takashima mechanized coal mine, established the slip dock that birthed the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard, and helped launch Japan's modern brewing industry (today's Kirin Beer). Exploring the mansion's lavish Victorian salons reveals a concealed attic room where anti-shogunate samurai dissidents were sheltered in secrecy. Within the manicured garden grounds, visitors delight in seeking out the famous cobblestone "Heart Stones," said to bestow eternal love upon romantic travelers who discover and touch them. Just below the entrance to Glover Garden rises the iconic facade of **Oura Cathedral** (*Oura Tenshudō*), Japan's oldest standing Christian church, designated as an official National Treasure and UNESCO World Heritage Site. Erected in 1864 by French Catholic missionaries to honor the 26 Christian Martyrs of Japan, this Gothic-style basilica featuring delicate wooden arches and imported French stained-glass windows was the setting for the miraculous "Discovery of the Hidden Christians" (*Kakure Kirishitan*), when local villagers who had secretly preserved their Catholic faith underground for over 250 years amidst deadly persecution quietly revealed themselves to Father Bernard Petitjean.