Osaka Museum of History, History museum in Ōtemae district, Osaka, Japan.
The Osaka Museum of History is a ten-story building in the Ōtemae district that presents the city's development through models and reconstructions spanning different eras. The exhibition spaces occupy floors seven through ten, while lower levels house service facilities and storage areas.
The museum opened in November 2001 and devotes considerable space to the ancient Naniwa Palace that once stood here when Osaka served as Japan's first capital. Archaeologists uncovered the palace foundations during construction work for the museum directly beneath the site.
Each floor uses life-size recreations to show how people worked, traded, and inhabited the city during different eras. Visitors can walk through a theater street from the Taishō era or peer inside warehouses where rice merchants once stacked their goods.
The building is near Tanimachi 4-chome Station and easiest to reach through the south exit. Exhibitions are open Wednesday through Monday, with closures on Tuesdays and during New Year holidays.
Visitors begin their exploration on the tenth floor and work downward through chronological exhibits while catching views of Osaka Castle through glass walls. The top level displays a fully reconstructed audience hall with hundreds of colorful columns, exactly as courtiers would have experienced it in the eighth century.
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