Urakami Cathedral

Urakami was a village of hidden Christians. Two years after its people revealed their faith at Oura Church in 1865, the persecution known as the Urakami Yonban Kuzure began: 3,394 villagers were exiled to domains across Japan, and more than 600 died before the ban on Christianity was lifted in 1873. The survivors came home and in 1895 started building a church on the site of the village headman's house, where they had once been made to tread on sacred images. The red-brick cathedral was finished with its two bell towers in 1925. On 9 August 1945 the atomic bomb exploded about 500 meters away. The church collapsed, and about 8,500 of the parish's 12,000 members died. The present building dates from 1959 and was refaced in brick in 1980. Walk round to the north side: a 50-ton bell-tower dome still lies where it slid into the stream below the embankment. The scorched head of the altar's Mary statue, found in the rubble that October, is kept in a small chapel beside the church.