The Lumbini Garden was the Buddha’s birthplace. In Sanskrit, Lumbini means ‘the lovely’. It was the family home of his mother, Mayadevi, and she returned here from Kapilavastu (25 km east of Lumbini) to give birth to Siddhartha Gautama, later the Buddha (‘Enlightened One’). The site was described by the Chinese pilgrim Fa Xian and re-discovered in 1896. In 1997 it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site and there is a master plan for a monastic zone by the famous Japanese modernist architect Kenzo Tange. Like the same designer’s plan for the Peace Park in Hiroshima, it seems to have been inspired by the Neo-Baroque. There is a long avenue and a circular canal. But the sacred pool remains a place of exceptional calm.