In myth, Athena, goddess of wisdom, and Poseidon, god of the sea, competed to be the city's protector. According to the ancient geographer Pausanias, the sculptures of the Parthenon's west pediment depicted this contest; the area of the neighbouring Erechtheion is said to have held Athena's sacred olive tree, and the temple honoured both Athena and Poseidon.
Myths and legends
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Europe: civilization and memoryStories rooted in place
The basilica's mosaics tell a story of 'predestination': an angel once foretold to St Mark that one day he would be buried in Venice. This legend gave Venice's possession of the saint's relics a 'divine mandate'. The basilica also has a pillar where, it is said, the relics were miraculously found again in 1094, a scene depicted in the mosaic opposite.
The lower level of the New Town Hall Glockenspiel shows the coopers' dance (Schäfflertanz). It is said that after a severe plague ended in 1517, the coopers danced in the streets to encourage frightened residents to come out of their homes again. Traditionally the dance is performed every seven years during Carnival; by 1700 it was already recorded as an 'old custom', though today's steps were only fixed in 1871.
During the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683, Kulczycki dressed in Turkish clothes and crossed the enemy camp singing Ottoman songs to contact the relief army, and was hailed by the citizens as a hero. Legend says he used coffee beans left behind by the retreating Ottoman army to open Vienna's first coffee house. More recent research, however, suggests that Vienna's first coffee house was opened in 1685 by the Armenian Johannes Diodato.
At least six ravens are kept at the Tower of London. Legend says that 'if the ravens are lost or fly away, the Crown will fall and Britain with it', and local lore traces the ravens back to the reign of Charles II. But some scholars, including the Tower's official historian, believe the legend is probably a Victorian invention: the earliest known reference to ravens kept at the Tower is an illustration from 1883.
The Americas: echoes of the landStories rooted in place
According to Inca oral history recorded in Spanish chronicles, Pachacuti called Cusco the 'city of the lion' (usually understood as the puma): the meeting of two rivers was its tail, the great square and surrounding houses its body, but it lacked a head. His son Túpac Inca later decided to build a fortress on the heights north of the city as the finest head for this puma — Saksaywaman.
Australia & New ZealandStories rooted in place
In the Anangu people's Tjukurpa (law and creation stories), the route visitors used to climb Uluru is the very path the ancestral Mala men took when they came to Uluru. Because it crosses a sacred traditional route, the Anangu themselves never climb it, and have long asked visitors not to climb either.
Southeast AsiaStories rooted in place
Legend has it that the 16th-century religious figure Nirartha, deeply influenced by Hinduism, travelled through Bali, Lombok and Sumbawa spreading his teaching, and on the way spent a night on this rock in the sea. The founding of Tanah Lot is attributed to him, and today he himself is worshipped there.
Japanese folklore says a giant catfish (Namazu) lives underground and causes earthquakes whenever it thrashes. In 1653 Hội An's Japanese residents added a small temple to the covered bridge, said to be meant to pacify this catfish. The temple is guarded by a pair of monkey statues and a pair of dog statues — in Japanese folk tales, the monkey god and the dog god are the very deities who can subdue the giant catfish.
Legend says a monk from Sukhothai, Sumanathera, was guided in a dream to find a relic of the Buddha. The king of Sukhothai doubted the relic was genuine and told him to keep it himself. In 1368 the monk took the relic north to Lanna, where it split in two: the smaller piece was enshrined at Wat Suan Dok, and the king placed the other on the back of a white elephant and released it into the forest. The elephant climbed Doi Suthep, then called 'Sugar-cane Elephant Mountain', stopped, trumpeted three times and fell dead. Taking this as a divine sign, the king immediately ordered a temple built there.
Japan: belief and daily lifeStories rooted in place
According to the 'Sensō-ji Engi' and other records, in 628 two fishermen brothers, Hinokuma Hamanari and Takenari, netted a statue of Kannon while fishing in the Sumida River, and Sensō-ji was founded. In 645 the monk Shōkai, following a revelation in a dream, made the statue a hidden Buddha, and it has never been shown since. It is said to be a golden statue about 5.5 cm tall, but because it is never shown, no one knows what it really looks like.
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Legend says Takemikazuchi, one of the four deities of Kasuga Taisha, came at the shrine's invitation from Kashima Jingū (in present-day Ibaraki) and appeared on Mount Mikasa riding a white deer. Ever since, Nara's deer have been regarded by Kasuga Taisha and Kōfuku-ji as messengers of the gods. Until 1637, killing a sacred deer was a capital offence.
According to temple tradition, in 778 the monk Kenshin (later renamed Enchin) received a revelation in a dream and came to practise beside the waterfall on Mount Otowa. Two years later Sakanoue no Tamuramaro, hunting in the mountains for deer blood as medicine for his sick wife, met Kenshin and was deeply moved. In 798 he and Enchin built the main hall on a large scale and enshrined Bishamonten and Jizō Bodhisattva.
For believers, Kūkai has not died but remains in eternal meditation in Okunoin, still praying for all beings. Every day monks carry meals to the mausoleum, serving him as they would a living master.
Michizane wrote many poems about plum blossom in his lifetime. Legend says that after he died in exile, his favourite plum tree at his Kyoto residence flew overnight to Dazaifu to be reunited with its master; today this 'flying plum' at the Tenmangū is said to be the first plum tree in Japan to bloom each year.
Because the house and its surroundings evoke Puccini's opera 'Madama Butterfly', it is also known as the 'Madame Butterfly House'. The garden has statues of Puccini and of Miura Tamaki, the soprano famous for singing Madama Butterfly.
Legend says that when an epidemic swept Hakata in 1241, Shōichi Kokushi (Enni), founder of Jōten-ji, sat on a wooden platform and had people carry him around the city while he sprinkled water and prayed, finally driving away the disease. This is considered the origin of the Hakata Gion Yamakasa.
The Sanada Ten Braves were shaped by later storytelling and literature, not a verified group of ten retainers serving Sanada Nobushige. At Ueda Castle, distinguish the site’s history from later fiction.
The tale of three arrows teaches unity among Mōri Motonari’s sons. Akitakata City presents it as a traditional anecdote; the teaching scene is not a verified historical event.
According to a legend, Uesugi Kenshin charged alone into Takeda Shingen’s headquarters and Shingen parried with his war fan. The two did fight at Kawanakajima, but this close encounter lacks contemporary confirmation.
A place-name legend recorded in Echizen Chiri Shinan, preserved by the Fukui Prefectural Archives, identifies Tojinbo as a monk of Heisenji Temple. It says fellow monks pushed him from the coastal cliffs while he was drunk, and that he pulled another monk and a temple boy down with him; a storm followed. This is a recorded folk tale, not established history.
Masamune's right eye was blinded by smallpox, but exactly how he lost it is not reliably recorded. One widely told story is that, so that the dead eye would not become a weakness, Masamune had his most trusted retainer, Katakura Kojūrō, gouge it out with his own hands.
The Kojiki records that Ōkuninushi (then called Ōnamuji) and his eighty elder brothers set off to Inaba to court Princess Yakami. On the way they met a white hare that had been skinned: it had tricked crocodile-sharks into lining up as a bridge across the sea and was flayed when found out. The brothers played a cruel trick on it, telling it to bathe in seawater and dry itself in the wind; only Ōkuninushi told it to wash in the fresh water of the river mouth and roll in cattail pollen. Healed, the hare prophesied that Princess Yakami would choose Ōkuninushi.
According to the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, when Ninigi, grandson of Amaterasu, descended from heaven, Ōkuninushi handed over to him the land he had created. Amaterasu was so pleased that she granted Izumo Taisha to Ōkuninushi. The present main hall was rebuilt in 1744 and is 24 m tall.
The Nihon Shoki records that about two thousand years ago, Yamatohime-no-mikoto, daughter of Emperor Suinin, set out from Mount Miwa in Nara to find a permanent place to worship Amaterasu, ancestral deity of the imperial family; after twenty years of wandering through Ōmi, Mino and other provinces, she finally came to Ise.
Tōshō-gū has a 'Sleeping Cat' carving said to be the work of the master craftsman Hidari Jingorō; the sacred stable bears three monkeys who 'see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil', derived from the Analects' 'look not at what is improper, listen not to what is improper, speak not what is improper'.
China: landscapes and livesStories rooted in place
The 'Legend of the White Snake' tells of the white snake spirit Bai Suzhen, who falls in love with and marries the scholar Xu Xian. Her true form is exposed by the monk Fahai, Xu Xian is lured to Jinshan Temple, and Lady White floods Jinshan to rescue her husband, before finally being imprisoned by Fahai beneath the Leifeng Pagoda beside West Lake. The Ming-dynasty story 'The Three Pagodas of West Lake' from the Jiajing era is considered the earliest form of the legend.
Central AsiaStories rooted in place
The Kalyan Minaret was completed in 1127 by the Karakhanid ruler Arslan Khan. Legend says that about a century later, when Genghis Khan took Bukhara, he was so struck by the tower's grandeur that he ordered it alone spared amid the destruction all around. The tower also has an unsettling nickname, the 'Tower of Death' — until the early 20th century criminals were executed by being thrown from the top.
On 19 June 1941 the Soviet anthropologist Mikhail Gerasimov opened Timur's tomb to study his remains and reconstructed his face from the skull. Legend says the coffin bore the inscription: 'Whoever opens my tomb shall unleash an invader more terrible than I.' People around Gerasimov said this was a made-up story, but by coincidence, three days after the tomb was opened, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union.
Islands & Polar RegionsStories rooted in place
According to the 'Book of Settlements', Ingólfr Arnarson and his foster brother Hjörleifr sailed from Norway to Iceland. On sighting land he threw the pillars from either side of his high seat into the sea, vowing to settle wherever the gods let them wash ashore. Two slaves searched the coast for three years before finding the pillars in a small bay — the place that later became Reykjavík.