Gion
Walking Hanamikoji as the lanterns come on, you pass the wooden ochaya teahouses of Kyoto's geisha district, then cross Shijo for the willows and quiet water of the Shirakawa canal.
Things to do
47-
Fushimi Inari-taisha
You can walk the vermilion tunnels of the Senbon Torii, then keep climbing as the gates thin out, the air cools and the forest closes in.
View more → -
Arashiyama Bamboo Grove
Short as the path is, the bamboo rises on both sides of you and closes over your head, so for its whole length you walk under a green roof with the city shut out.
View more → -
Kinkaku-ji
Standing at the pond edge, you see two storeys of gold leaf and a gilt phoenix reflected in still water. On the four or five days a year when snow lies on the roof, the gold looks brighter still.
View more → -
Philosopher's Path
Flat and shaded, this canal path takes you under hundreds of cherry trees in spring and red maples in autumn, past shrines and quiet residential lanes between two of Kyoto's great temples.
View more → -
Tenryu-ji Sogenchi Garden
One seat gives you the whole garden: from the middle of the Hojo veranda, the pond, the stone waterfall and the Arashiyama hills line up as one view, in the form it has kept for about seven hundred years.
View more → -
Ginkaku-ji
Ginkaku-ji's garden gives you raked white sand and a damp hillside of mosses in one short loop, two very different gardens on a single walk.
View more → -
Nishiki Market
Taste your way along one covered lane of food stalls, a few bites at each, instead of sitting down to one meal.
View more → -
Kyoto Railway Museum
Come for the roundhouse, where Japan's largest collection of steam locomotives stands in a ring around a turntable that still works. Then ride behind one of them on the short steam loop outside.
View more → -
Arashiyama
The Togetsukyo bridge sits at the busy centre of the district, and a walk north from it takes you into temple lanes where thousands of stone figures stand in courtyards and on wooded slopes.
View more → -
Chion-in
From the Sanmon, one of the largest wooden gates in Japan, you climb stone steps to the head temple of Pure Land Buddhism and the hall that holds its founder's image.
View more → -
Daitoku-ji
A quiet cluster of Zen subtemples, well away from Kyoto's busiest sights, lets you see two of the city's finest rock gardens in a couple of hours.
View more → -
Heian Shrine
The garden here has a pond you cross on the stone piers of two old Kyoto river bridges, behind red halls copied from the old court city.
View more → -
Iwatayama Monkey Park
Between the forest and the feeding hut, wild macaques move freely among visitors on the hilltop of Mount Iwata, and one may walk straight up to you with a hand held out.
View more → -
Jidai Matsuri
If you are in Kyoto on 22 October, you can watch a two-kilometre costume procession from the kerb for free, along the route between the Imperial Palace and Heian Jingu.
View more → -
Kamo River
At dusk the grassy bank below Sanjo gives you an open seat by the water in the middle of Kyoto, with the restaurant lanterns of Pontocho reflected in the river.
View more → -
Kennin-ji
Stepping out of Gion into Kyoto's oldest Zen temple, you find twin ink dragons across a whole hall ceiling and three gardens you can sit and watch.
View more → -
Kifune Shrine
There are red wooden lanterns all the way up the stone steps of Kifune Shrine, in the hills north of Kyoto, and the road beyond them leads you on into old forest.
View more → -
Kurama-dera
For a temple visit that is also a forest walk, take the Eizan line north: the way up to the temple runs through old trees, and the trail keeps going beyond it.
View more → -
Kyoto Imperial Palace
The visit is a walk through gate after imposing gate, across the walled compound where Japan's imperial family lived for the ten centuries Kyoto was the capital, and out into the national garden that wraps around it.
View more → -
Otagi Nenbutsu-ji
One slope at the far end of Saga holds a crowd of carved stone faces, near enough to catch every grin, frown and odd prop, at the top of the long haul up from the bamboo.
View more → -
Sagano Scenic Railway
Open on both sides, the fifth car puts nothing between you and the Hozugawa below as the train follows the mountainside up the valley.
View more → -
Tōfuku-ji
Walk a covered wooden bridge a hundred metres long, high above a valley filled with maples in late autumn, then look back at it from a deck behind four Zen gardens.
View more → -
Yasaka Shrine
Yasaka's dance stage is lit by hundreds of lanterns after dark, and a short walk round the main hall brings you to a small spring known as the beauty water.
View more → -
Kiyomizu-dera
A wooden stage jutting from the main hall puts you thirteen metres above a hillside of cherry and maple.
View more → -
Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art
A 1930s hall on Okazaki Park shows you Kyoto painting from the Meiji era to today, and the 2020 renewal added glass and a modern wing behind the untouched original front.
View more → -
Kyoto National Museum
Fifty National Treasures rotate through one modern wing, so a single visit can take you from giant Buddhist statues to famous Japanese painters. Check what is on show before you go.
View more → -
Fushimi Sake District
Before you buy a bottle of sake anywhere in Kyoto, taste it in Fushimi, the city's old brewing quarter.
View more → -
Higashiyama
Avoid midday, when the lanes are crowded, then drive on; parking is in lots below the slope and the climb is steep.
-
Nijō Castle
Budget 90 minutes for the palace interior and gardens; parking on site makes it the easiest Kyoto stop with a car.
-
The National Museum of Modern Art
Maki Fumihiko's granite and glass museum gives you twentieth-century art from Kyoto and Kansai, with the great red torii of Heian Shrine visible from its fourth-floor lobby. The displays change about five times a year, so a return visit shows you different works.
View more → -
Kyoto International Manga Museum
Take any volume off the open shelves and read it wherever you like: in the classrooms and corridors of an old primary school, on a bench or out in the schoolyard.
View more → -
Sen-oku Hakuko Kan
Ancient Chinese bronzes are the reason to come: ritual wine vessels and bells, some over three thousand years old, from the Sumitomo family's collection. The galleries are small and rarely busy. The museum sits in Shishigatani, near the southern end of the Philosopher's Path, and it opens for exhibition seasons in spring and autumn.
-
Eikan-dō
Maples cover this hillside temple between Nanzen-ji and the Philosopher's Path, and in late November it is among the busiest sights in the city, with an evening illumination that reflects the trees in the pond. Covered corridors climb to a small pagoda with a view west over Kyoto. The Buddha in the main hall looks back over its shoulder. Outside the foliage season it is quiet.
-
Hōnen-in
Beyond a thatched gate, two low mounds of white sand, raked with seasonal patterns, flank the path into this small temple in the woods above the Philosopher's Path. The grounds are free and usually quiet. The main hall opens to visitors only for a week in early April and a week in early November. It is a five-minute walk uphill from the canal, about halfway along.
-
Kitano Tenmangū
Students pray here before their exams, and the shrine's plum orchard of about 1,500 trees blooms from February into March, the first colour of the Kyoto year. On the 25th of every month a flea market of antiques, kimono and food stalls fills the grounds. Kinkaku-ji is a twenty-minute walk north, so the two combine easily.
-
Kōdai-ji
This temple stands on the slope between Gion and Kiyomizu-dera, so it fits a walk between the two. A moss and pond garden, a small bamboo grove and gold lacquer work in the memorial hall are the things to see. On evenings in spring, summer and autumn the gardens and the bamboo are lit, and the temple stays open late.
-
Nanzen-ji
Through the grounds of this large Zen temple at the foot of the eastern hills runs a brick aqueduct with Roman-style arches, still carrying water from Lake Biwa. The grounds and the aqueduct are free, and the tall Sanmon gate can be climbed for a view over the city. The Hōjō has a raked gravel garden, and the subtemples around it have gardens of their own. The Philosopher's Path starts a few minutes north.
-
Nishi Hongan-ji
Two huge wooden halls face the street a short walk north of Kyoto Station, and both are free to enter, with tatami floors where visitors can sit. This is the head temple of a major branch of Shin Buddhism, and a service is held early every morning. The Karamon gate on the south side is covered in painted carvings.
-
Ōkōchi Sansō
Up the hill at the end of the bamboo grove path, the villa of a 1920s film star has a garden that winds up the slope to views over the city and down to the river. The ticket includes matcha and a sweet in a tea house at the end. It sees a fraction of the grove's crowd, and an hour covers it.
-
Ponto-chō
Wooden teahouses, restaurants and small bars line this narrow lane for half a kilometre between Shijō and Sanjō streets, one block from the Kamo River. From May to September the restaurants on the river side build wooden platforms over the bank for dinner outside. Lanterns light the lane after dark, when it is at its best. Photographing geiko and maiko without permission is not allowed.
-
Ryōan-ji
Fifteen rocks in a rectangle of raked white gravel, laid out in the late fifteenth century by a designer who has never been identified. From any seat on the veranda at least one rock is hidden behind another. Its meaning is undocumented, and the temple offers no reading of its own. The large pond garden outside predates it by centuries. First entry, at eight, is the quiet one.
-
Saihō-ji
More than a hundred kinds of moss carpet the grounds of this temple in western Kyoto, which gives it its other name, the Moss Temple. Entry is by advance reservation only, through the temple's own booking system, and places go weeks ahead. Each visit begins with copying a sutra in the main hall before the garden opens to visitors.
-
Sanjūsangen-dō
One thousand and one life-size statues of the Buddhist deity Kannon stand in ten rows down a single wooden hall about 120 metres long, with gods of wind and thunder in front of them. Photography is banned inside, and shoes come off at the door. The hall faces the Kyoto National Museum across the road, a twenty-minute walk or a short bus ride from Kyoto Station.
-
Sanzen-in
In the village of Ōhara, about an hour by bus north of the centre, this temple sits in a moss garden under cedars, with small stone figures half-buried in the moss. The lane up from the bus stop climbs beside a stream past pickle shops. It is quiet compared with the city temples, and Hōsen-in and Jakkō-in nearby make a half day of it.
-
Shimogamo Shrine
Tall old trees shade the Tadasu no Mori, the forest path that leads up to this shrine where the Kamo and Takano rivers meet. The vermilion halls stand on one of the oldest shrine sites in the city, and the forest walk is free and shady even in summer. It is ten minutes on foot north of Demachiyanagi station, and in mid-May the Aoi Festival procession passes through.
-
Shōren-in
Giant camphor trees stand at the gate of this quiet temple north of Chion-in, and most tour groups walk straight past it. Inside, tatami rooms open onto a pond garden and a mossy slope, and matcha can be ordered in the main room. On some evenings in spring and autumn the garden is lit in blue.
-
Tō-ji
Kyoto's tallest wooden pagoda, five storeys high, stands over the pond garden of this temple a fifteen-minute walk south-west of Kyoto Station, and it can be seen from the shinkansen just west of Kyoto Station. The lecture hall holds a mandala laid out in statues. On the 21st of every month a big market of antiques, food and plants fills the grounds.
Basemap Meridian · data © OpenStreetMap
