Tsuruga Castle is located in the center of the Aizu basin and at crossroads to Kōriyama to the north and Yonezawa to the east and Murakami on the Sea of Japan coast.

However, Masamune was in turn forced to pledge fealty to Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1590, and were obliged to relocate north to Sendai.

Ujisato died of illness at the age of 39, and Toyotomi Hideyoshi reassigned his vast domain to Uesugi Kagekatsu, whom he relocated from Echigo Province.

After the defeat of the Shōgunate at the Battle of Toba-Fushimi and the abdication of power by Shōgun Tokugawa Yoshinobu, Matsudaira become one of the leaders in the pro-Tokugawa alliance against the new Meiji government.

During the Battle of Aizu in the Boshin War, Tsuruga Castle was besieged by the forces of the Satchō Alliance in October 1868.

The castle site was mostly sold off to private landowners, with only the central portion (23 hectares) kept by the government for use by an Imperial Japanese Army garrison until 1908.

With the popularity of the Byakkotai story in pre-war Japan, a movement arose to preserve the site of the castle, and it was made into a public park.

The National Historic Site status was granted in 1934,[2] although the area still suffered from indignities, such as a velodrome operating in the inner bailey until 1957.

The inner bailey is pentagonal, with length of approximately 200 meters, surrounded by deep moats and tall stone walls.

The original tenshu under the Gamō clan was a massive seven-story structure with black walls and gold roof tiles, similar to Toyotomi Hideyoshi's Osaka Castle.