Nagasaki is a city of steep hills around a deep harbour, and on one of those slopes above the old foreign settlement stands a small white Gothic church that is, in its quiet way, one of the most important in Japan. Oura Cathedral was built in the early 1860s by French missionaries, who had been allowed to serve the foreign community in the treaty port after Japan's long seclusion, and it was dedicated to the twenty-six Christians who were executed on a hill in Nagasaki in 1597. The church faces the site of that martyrdom, and it is the oldest surviving Gothic-style church in the country.
Its fame comes from what happened a few weeks after it opened. In March 1865, a group of local people came to the church and told the French priest, Bernard Petitjean, that their hearts were the same as his. They were Kakure Kirishitan, hidden Christians whose families had practised the faith in secret for more than two centuries after it was banned, passing down prayers by word of mouth and disguising their images as Buddhist figures. The meeting was seen as a miracle in Europe, and the so-called finding of the hidden Christians led to a new wave of persecution before the ban was lifted in 1873. The cathedral stands as a monument to that long, quiet fidelity and is part of the Hidden Christian Sites World Heritage listing.
Nagasaki is a hard city to ride in and an easy one to love. Roads are narrow and steep, the old Dutch and Chinese quarters are tangled with one-way streets, and trams share the main roads, so tracks and wet rails call for care. A short walk takes you to Glover Garden, laid out around the former houses of foreign merchants, and the view from the hillside across the harbour is the reward. The Nagasaki ropeway to Mount Inasa gives a famous night view, and the peace park and atomic bomb museum are essential for understanding the city's modern history.
With over four hundred thousand people, Nagasaki has fuel, food and everything else. Try champon, a noodle soup with seafood and vegetables invented here by Chinese immigrants, and castella, a sponge cake brought by Portuguese traders in the sixteenth century. Spring and autumn offer the best weather, and the rainy season in early summer can be heavy.