The Nan'yō Shrine was built by Japan in 1940 as the spiritual centre of its South Seas Mandate, the league-of-nations colony that included Palau, the Marianas and the Marshalls. For five years it was the principal Shinto shrine across thousands of kilometres of Pacific island.
What remains today is a quiet, atmospheric ruin in the jungle just north of central Koror — a long stone staircase climbing through ferns to a flat platform where the main building once stood. It is rarely signposted and not all locals know exactly where it is, but if you ask at the museum someone will point you in the right direction. A reminder that the Japanese colonial period in Palau, often glossed over by visitors, lasted nearly thirty years.