Things to do
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Kasuga-taisha
Kasuga-taisha's lanterns run the whole way in: stone ones stand along the forest path you walk to the shrine, and bronze ones hang the length of the vermilion corridor around its main halls.
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Nara Park
Hold up a treat and a wild deer will often bow its head before taking it from your hand. Tōdai-ji, Kōfuku-ji and the Nara National Museum all sit beside the same lawns.
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Tōdai-ji
From the two Niō in Nandaimon to the Buddha and its attendant figures in the hall, then up to quieter halls on the hillside, your visit climbs through the temple in one unbroken sequence.
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Nara National Museum
Each autumn the museum shows treasures from the Shōsōin repository for about two weeks, from late October into November, on dated and timed tickets booked well ahead. The Meiji brick hall of Buddhist sculpture is shut for renovation until about spring 2028. Outside the special exhibitions, only the gallery of ancient Chinese bronzes stays open until then.
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Byakugō-ji
A flight of stone steps climbs out of the fields on the southeastern edge of the city to a small hillside temple. Ancient plum blooms here in February and bush clover takes over in September, spilling across the path. From the top the whole basin lies below, with the pagodas small in the middle distance.
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Gangō-ji
Some roof tiles on the main hall are older than Nara itself. They came from Japan's first full Buddhist temple when it moved here, and show as a patch of browns and greys among the newer clay. The temple sits inside Naramachi's lanes and rarely draws a crowd; allow about an hour for the hall, the tiles and the small treasure house.
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Heijō Palace
Bring water and a hat: the site of the old imperial palace is a square kilometre of open grass with little shade, about three kilometres west of the centre. Two great gates and an audience hall have been rebuilt at full size on their excavated footings. A railway line runs straight across the middle of it, between the main gate and the hall.
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Higashimuki Shopping Street
Roofed over for its whole length, this arcade runs south from Kintetsu Nara station to Sanjō-dori, lined with sweet shops, souvenir stores and small places to eat. It is the dry route toward the park when it rains and the easiest place in the centre to find dinner.
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Hōryū-ji
Allow half a day for the oldest wooden buildings standing anywhere, in the town of Ikaruga southwest of Nara. The JR train to Hōryūji station takes about eleven minutes, and a twenty-minute walk from there ends on a pine-lined lane to the gate. UNESCO lists the temple on its own, separately from Nara's monuments, and the halls close earlier in winter.
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Isuien Garden
Two stroll gardens are joined into one here, and the rear garden borrows its backdrop: the roof of Tōdai-ji's great south gate and the grassy slope of Mount Wakakusa rise beyond the pond. A small museum of Chinese bronzes and Korean ceramics is included in the ticket. It closes on Tuesdays, except in April, May, October and November.
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Kasuga Wakamiya Shrine
Beyond Kasuga-taisha's main hall, a lantern-lined path leads south past rows of small subsidiary shrines to this smaller sanctuary. It keeps the same vermilion and bronze with a fraction of the visitors, and it is free to enter. The On-matsuri festival starts here, when the deity is carried out in darkness at midnight on 16 to 17 December.
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Kasugayama Primeval Forest
Old-growth forest covers the hill behind Kasuga-taisha, protected from felling and hunting since the ninth century and part of the city's World Heritage listing. A gravel road and footpaths loop through it, past cedars and stone Buddhas carved into the rock, with few other walkers. The full circuit over to Mount Wakakusa takes most of a morning, so carry water.
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Kōfuku-ji
The grounds are free and sit between Kintetsu Nara station and the park, so the walk in from the station passes through them. The five-storey pagoda is hidden inside a restoration hoarding until 2034, which makes the National Treasure Hall the reason to stop. Its three-faced, six-armed Ashura figure is among the finest sculptures in Japan, and the hall takes under an hour.
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Man'yō Botanical Garden
Every plant named in the Man'yōshū, Japan's oldest poetry anthology, grows in one garden beside Kasuga's approach, about three hundred species of them. Wisteria is the set piece, twenty odd varieties trained on frames and flowering from late April into May. Quiet in every other month, which is most of the year.
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Mount Wakakusa
Three grassy tiers rise straight off the eastern edge of the park, bare of trees and grazed short by deer. The climb takes under an hour and opens the whole Nara basin, with Ikoma on the far rim. Gates control the entrance and shut outside the season. On one Saturday each January the entire hillside is set alight.
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Nara Prefectural Museum of Art
Screens, scrolls and ukiyo-e from the prefecture's own collection hang in a low building between the park and the arcade, weighted toward work made in or about Nara. Shows change through the year and rarely run long. Five minutes from the station, and the indoor hour worth keeping in reserve for rain.
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Naramachi
Afternoon is the time for this grid of narrow, lattice-fronted townhouses south of Sarusawa Pond: the park is at its busiest and the lanes here are quiet. Several restored merchant houses open free of charge; they are narrow at the front and run a long way back. Stuffed red monkeys hang from the eaves as charms against illness, and small cafés and craft shops fill the ground floors.
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Nigatsu-dō
Steps climb the hillside behind the Great Buddha to a hall standing on stilts, its wooden balcony cantilevered out over the rooftops. Nothing here is ticketed or staffed and the terrace stands open at any hour. Fire rites called Omizutori have been performed in the hall every March since 752, without a year missed.
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Sangatsu-dō
Tōdai-ji's oldest surviving hall stands a short walk uphill from the Great Buddha. A group of eighth century clay and lacquer figures keeps its original arrangement inside, lit low and shown without glass between the statues and the room. It went up before the great hall below it and takes a fraction of the traffic.
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Sarusawa Pond
Willows lean over a small pond at the foot of the Kōfuku-ji steps, three minutes from the covered arcade and ringed by a path that takes five. Its reflection of the five-storey pagoda is the stock image of the city, though the pagoda itself is inside a restoration hoarding and stays there into the 2030s.
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Shin-Yakushi-ji
Twelve clay generals stand in a ring around a seated Yakushi in a plain eighth century hall, life sized, each pulling a different face. The building is one of the few from the Nara period still standing anywhere. It sits twenty five minutes on foot beyond the park's edge and is very often empty.
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Shōsōin
Behind the great hall stands a log treasure house raised clear of the ground on posts, its walls built from triangular beams stacked without nails. It held an eighth century emperor's personal effects for twelve hundred years, Persian glass and a Chinese lute among them. The interior is closed and the exterior can be walked around.
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Tōshōdai-ji
Pair this temple with Yakushi-ji, ten minutes away on foot along a quiet lane. Its eighth-century Golden Hall still stands, the front left open behind a row of heavy columns, and the gravelled grounds are shaded by pines. The tomb of Ganjin, the blind monk who founded it, lies in the trees at the back.
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Ukimidō
A hexagonal wooden pavilion stands over Sagiike Pond in the quieter southern part of Nara Park, reached by a short bridge. It is free and open at all hours. Its reflection is at its best at first light and again after dusk. Deer graze the lawns around the pond, and it is about fifteen minutes on foot from Kintetsu Nara station.
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Yakushi-ji
Twin pagodas frame the Golden Hall of a temple founded in the 680s and moved to the capital soon after. Only the eastern one is original, its three roofs carrying half-roofs between them so that six read as three. Five kilometres southwest of the centre, and paired with its neighbour it makes an easy half day.
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Yoshiki-en
Three small gardens share a wall with Isuien next door: a pond garden, a moss garden under maples, and a tea garden around a thatched hut. The moss is the reason to come and is at its best after rain. Half an hour covers it, and it asks nothing of the legs.
