Tokyo has so many famous places that people wanting to take a look around the city may find it difficult to decide where to begin. But Edo Castle (now the Imperial Palace) is a good place to start, because it was through the construction of Edo Castle that Edo developed into a city. True to the old city's name, which literally means "entrance to the inlet," the development of Edo started by the sea. Although the area around the former waterfront is the oldest part of the city, a succession of landfill projects have removed all traces of the original coastline.

The site where the Imperial Palace now stands has been occupied by official structures for centuries. The first was Edo Yakata (yakata means palace, castle, or mansion), built in the twelfth century. At that time, the site was a spot of high ground overlooking the sea: What is now the forest of office buildings that make up the Hibiya area was once covered by water. In 1457, the first Edo Castle was built on the site of Edo Yakata. In 1590 Tokugawa Ieyasu entered the castle and initiated its renovation and expansion and the development of a major castle town. After learning about the layout of Chinese cities, Japanese cities were built with a strong emphasis on the eight directions of the compass. Because Mt. Fuji and other mountains lie to the west, the main gate of Edo Castle was built on the opposite side, facing east. That gate is the present-day Otemon gate. In front of Otemon lies the Otemachi district. Thirteen years after building the castle, Ieyasu became the most powerful of all the daimyo. This power transformed Edo into a major city to which people flocked from all over the country.

Not only for the castle construction but also for the people who had come to live in Edo, large quantities of rice, stone, and timber needed to be transported to the city. Also needed was the infrastructure to ensure a stable supply of drinking water. For this purpose, many canals were dug in the city, and a system of underground wooden pipes was constructed to draw water from the rivers that flowed down from the westward mountains. The piping was visible at the spot where it intersected the Kanda River, and that piece of history lives on in the place name Suidobashi ("Waterworks Bridge"). Edo was so crisscrossed by canals that "water city" would have been an apt description, and water made a frequent appearance in the ukiyo-e (woodblock prints) depicting Edo life. Today almost all of the canals have been filled in for roads. Flowing rivers and canals are no longer a common sight in Tokyo. Where the canals once flowed, not only is there no longer any water, but in many places elevated highways make it hard to even see the sky. And the high embankments that have been constructed along the Sumida River make it hard to see the water from any distance.

Tokyo is the capital of Japan, but Edo was not the official capital. The capital during the Edo period was Kyoto, where the Imperial Palace was located in those days. But the samurai were the ones with the real power, and this made Edo a crowded, lively place. Edo's population around the end of the eighteenth century is estimated at 1.3 million, which would have made it the largest city in the world at that time. One thing that drew so many people to the city was the system of sankin kotai, which required the daimyo to reside in Edo during alternate years. Although the Tokugawa clan had a grip on power, it was just one of 270 daimyo families. By requiring the others to present themselves on a regular basis, the Tokugawas sought to prevent civil war. This strategy seems to have worked. During the 250 years between 1615, when the Tokugawas captured Osaka Castle, and the skirmishes that ushered in the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Japan remained mostly free of internal strife. And for the 300 years after Toyotomi Hideyoshi's invasion of Korea in 1597, the country had no wars with other nations either.

To fulfill their obligation to reside in Edo during alternate years, the daimyo and their retainers needed residences in the city. The more powerful feudal domains had multiple residences in Edo. Besides quarters for the daimyo, their families, and their retainers, these residences had lavish gardens. Many large parks, green areas, and major facilities currently existing in Tokyo are situated on land that was once the site of a daimyo residence and its garden. The long list of such places includes Shinjuku Gyoen, Meiji Shrine, the Tokyo metropolitan government headquarters, the land now occupied by the State Guesthouse and Akasaka Palace, the Akasaka Prince Hotel, Sophia University, the University of Tokyo, the National Diet Building, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the National Theater, and the American Embassy.

The British plant hunter Robert Fortune, who visited Japan in 1860 and 1861, wrote that seen from a hilltop, the Edo terrain of undulations and hillocks was sprinkled here and there with gardens and was covered with evergreen trees. Even today, Tokyo has more green spaces than, for example, Osaka. Tokyo's green spaces are the legacy of the gardens of daimyo. The maintenance requirements of the gardens created a thriving nursery business and spurred an increase in the number of gardeners.

During Edo's heyday, the area extending from Nihonbashi eastward to the Ryogokubashi bridge was a densely packed commercial district. The area around what is now the Mitsukoshi department store in Nihonbashi was depicted with particular frequency in ukiyo-e woodblock prints, an indication that this part of town occupied a central place in everyday life at the time. The precursor to the Mitsukoshi department store and Mitsui Bank was the Mitsui Echigoya dry goods store and fudasashi (a place where rice was bought and sold and money was lent at interest). It had two buildings on either side of the road. A person standing between these buildings and looking westward could get a clear view of Mt. Fuji. West of Echigoya was the gold mint; today the Bank of Japan stands on that site. Nihonbashi was also home to ukiyo-e publishing houses, a hotel for Dutch visitors, and a clock with a bell that chimed the hour.

The Sumida River and its many bridges made up a beautiful landscape in those days. The area around the bridge known as Ryogokubashi was particularly lively in summertime. The theaters, teahouses, and restaurants around the bridge stayed open late into the evening, with the theaters hosting a well-packed program of events that included musical and storytelling performances and various kinds of shows. This townscape is depicted not only in ukiyo-e prints but also in the copperplate engravings first produced in the Edo period. Scenes of old Edo were often depicted in perspective, and there were shops where customers could view these scenes through special lenses that gave them a dynamic appearance. Such establishments were very popular in Edo, just as they were in Europe. But without a doubt the most popular diversion in Edo was Kabuki. In those days the city had three Kabuki houses, which tempted patrons with a ceaseless parade of new productions.