Shuri Castle stands on a hill east of the city centre, the former palace of the Ryukyu Kingdom and the symbolic heart of Okinawan history. The Ryukyus were an independent kingdom from 1429 until Japanese annexation in 1879, and Shuri was their capital — a place of court ceremony, Chinese and Japanese diplomatic contacts, and a culture that was distinctly neither Chinese nor Japanese but its own.
The castle is a UNESCO World Heritage Site as part of the Gusuku Sites of the Ryukyu Kingdom. The buildings you see are reconstructions — the originals were destroyed in the Battle of Okinawa in 1945, the reconstruction of 1992 then burned in 2019, and a new reconstruction is underway. Even so, the site has genuine power: the massive stone walls, the distinctive red lacquer architecture with its mix of Japanese and Chinese forms, and the views over the city to the sea below. Allow at least two hours.