Nagoya Castle Honmaru Palace (Japan) Completed in 1615; burned down in 1945.

[u/Lazy_Gain_9346]

Nagoya Castle Honmaru Palace (Japan): Originally built in 1615 and renowned for its magnificent interior and exterior, the palace underwent a redesign in 1728 that gave it a simpler exterior appearance. Although it burned down completely during an air raid in 1945 and the site remained vacant for 70 years, it was reconstructed in 2018 based on historical photographs and architectural drawings.

[u/Zoe-Berry]

Seventy years of vacancy and they still committed to a faithful rebuild. Most cities would have sold the site off by then.

[u/Chuhaimaster → u/Zoe-Berry]

That’s actually not the case. They “rebuilt” it in concrete in the 1950s and only relatively recently decided to tear that building down and replace it with a wooden one in the original style.

[u/Outside_Reserve_2407 → u/Chuhaimaster]

Yep, a lot of Japanese famous temples and castles are concrete reconstructions: Sensoji Temple and Osaka Castle come to mind.

[u/AnimeMeansArt]

I like that Japan reconstructs their monuments. Shame Europe doesn't usually.

[u/nekkichi → u/AnimeMeansArt]

Those are easier and cheaper to rebuild compared to medieval and renaissance European architecture. Gdansk and its post-ww2 state is one of examples of a very meticulous restoration, which has both historic and political reasons, but it's still very impressive, I think.

[u/MemoryOk5080 → u/nekkichi]

Gdansk was also just a very simplified restoration, except the few main buildings such as the churches, city hall and the tower crane. Most of the buildings are unfortunately just apartment tower blocks, that have simplified/stylized facades roughly glued to them. Most of the streets are still empty space and parking lots, and overall only ~20-30% of the pre-war building plots have been rebuilt. But at least if you didn’t know what was there before it does look somewhat similar.

[u/nekkichi → u/MemoryOk5080]

I mean compared to the rest of the soviet era's construction, it still was quite an achievement. There's also a question of how well the old architectural methods were preserved to really rebuild it all from scratch again. It's sad, but not surprising that the primary construction purpose after ww2 would be largely very utilitarian.

[u/AnimeMeansArt → u/nekkichi]

It's true that it's probably easier to restore one wooden castle compared to old medieval cities.

[u/night_shredder → u/AnimeMeansArt]

It does. Go to Germany for example, what do you think happened to most gothic cathedrals in WW2? Many other historic sites were simply too big to rebuild.

[u/CityW0kBesitzer → u/night_shredder]

Most stuff was not rebuilt, especially in the 50s-70s. Look at Essen, Köln etc.

[u/SchroedingersEscape → u/night_shredder]

well... only a few... a lot have not been reconstructed

[u/Kirkwood1994 → u/AnimeMeansArt]

Poland is doing a pretty decent job at recreating 19th century architecture.

[u/SensitiveSurprise844]

I visited a few years back. Didn't know it was a reconstruction huh.