Kyoto

Top things to do in Kyoto

1. 01

   Fushimi Inari Taisha - the torii tunnels up Mount Inari

   history scenic 👍 Popular

   Thousands of vermilion gates, each donated by a business, its name inscribed, tunnel up the mountain behind the shrine. The lower stretch is packed most of the day; twenty minutes higher the crowd thins to almost nothing. The summit loop takes two to three hours past sub-shrines, fox statues and miniature gates left as offerings. Dedicated to the deity of rice and commerce, it never closes: come at first light.

2. 02

   Kiyomizu-dera - the veranda out over the Higashiyama hillside

   history scenic 👍 Popular

   A hall thrown from the slope on a lattice of wooden pillars assembled without nails, looking over the treetops to the city and the ridge pagoda. The stone-paved lanes of Ninenzaka and Sannenzaka climb past pottery, pickle and sweet shops trading to pilgrims for centuries. Below, a spring splits into three streams people queue to drink with long-handled cups. It opens early and some seasons into the evening: go then.

3. 03

   Kinkaku-ji - the gold pavilion on its pond

   history scenic 👍 Popular

   Two upper floors covered in gold leaf, doubled in a pond arranged with islands and clipped pines to be read from exactly one path. What stands is a 1950s reconstruction after a novice monk burned the original down, which lessens nothing. The visit is a one-way loop of half an hour: go at opening or in the last hour, and snow on the roof stops the whole city.

4. 04

   Sanjusangen-do - a thousand and one Kannon in a single hall

   culture arts history ⭐ Highly recommended

   A wooden hall roughly a hundred and twenty metres long, holding 1,001 gilded thousand-armed Kannon ranked ten deep either side of a huge seated central statue, twenty-eight guardian deities in front. Most were carved in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, every face is different, and walking their length in near silence is unlike anything else in the city. No photography inside, which is a large part of why it works.

5. 05

   Daitoku-ji - the Zen sub-temples behind the walls

   culture arts history ⭐ Highly recommended

   A walled northern compound of twenty-odd sub-temples along its own gravel lanes; only a handful keep regular hours and the rest open occasionally or not at all. Behind them are some of Japan's finest small dry gardens and the heart of the tea tradition Sen no Rikyu shaped here. Wander rather than tick off: see what is open that day, and expect a fraction of the famous temples' crowds.

6. 06

   Ginkaku-ji and the Philosopher's Path - the silver pavilion and the canal walk

   history scenic

   The silver pavilion was never silvered: the restraint is the point, a dark wooden retreat above a moss garden, a cone of white sand and a raked sand sea, a short hillside loop over the rooftops. From its gate the Philosopher's Path runs two kilometres south along a cherry-lined canal past small temples, cats and coffee shops, one of the country's most walked blossom routes when the trees are out.

7. 07

   Ryoan-ji - fifteen stones in raked gravel

   culture arts history

   The most famous dry garden in Japan: a walled rectangle of white gravel holding five groups of rock and moss, arranged so that from any point on the veranda one stone is always hidden. Nobody is certain who made it, when exactly, or what it is supposed to mean, and centuries of explanations have not settled it. Behind the hall lies a large and much older pond garden that most visitors walk straight past, and the temple's tofu restaurant sits in the grounds.

8. 08

   Arashiyama - the bamboo grove, Tenryu-ji and the Togetsukyo bridge

   scenic nature wildlife

   The western edge of the city, where the river leaves the gorge. The bamboo path is fifteen minutes end to end, jammed from mid-morning; the reason to come is Tenryu-ji's pond garden behind it, a fourteenth-century layout borrowing the mountains, never redesigned. Add the hillside villa gardens above the grove, boats down the gorge, a scenic railway along the ravine, and the macaque park across the bridge, a real climb.

9. 09

   Nijo Castle - the shogun's palace and its nightingale floors

   history culture arts

   Less a fortress than a statement of who was in charge: a moated central compound, its Ninomaru palace a chain of tatami rooms painted with tigers and pines by the Kano school. The corridor floors chirp underfoot, and the audience hall is where the last shogun handed power back to the emperor in 1867. A stroll garden, a second inner moat, and cherry trees that draw crowds in spring.

10. 10

    Tofuku-ji - the maple ravine and the modernist gravel gardens

    culture arts scenic

    A large Zen complex south of the centre where a covered bridge crosses a ravine of maples: the most photographed autumn view in Kyoto, and why the temple is close to unmanageable when the colour peaks in November. The rest of the year it is quiet. The four gardens around the abbot's hall, laid out in the 1930s with checkerboard moss and set stones, are worth crossing the city for.

11. 11

    Nanzen-ji - the great gate and the brick aqueduct

    history scenic

    Head temple of its Zen school under the eastern hills, with a two-storey gate to climb for the view and a dry garden attributed to Kobori Enshu. Through the grounds runs a Roman-looking brick aqueduct, built in the 1880s to carry Lake Biwa water over the mountains; walk the channel uphill behind it. Sub-temples with pond gardens sit off the main path; the lane outside serves the area's simmered tofu.

12. 12

    Nishiki Market - the covered street that feeds Kyoto's kitchens

    food shopping

    Five narrow blocks of arcade parallel to the main shopping street, historically the fish market and still where restaurants buy pickles, tofu skin, dashi ingredients, knives and sweets. Half sells skewers and snacks to visitors, half is a serious supplier: come early for the second. Eating while you walk is discouraged; stalls would rather you stood at their counter, and the knife shops grind and engrave while you wait.

13. 13

    Gion and Pontocho after dark - the geiko districts

    culture arts nightlife music

    Gion's wooden machiya fronts along Hanamikoji, and Pontocho's lantern-lit alley, one building wide between street and river. The geiko and maiko here are walking to appointments, not performing: several of the private lanes ban photography outright; stand aside and never follow anyone. Both are full of ordinary eating and drinking: counter yakitori, standing bars, formal rooms behind unmarked doors. Most people in kimono are visitors who rented one.

14. 14

    Kaiseki, shojin ryori and the tofu tradition - eating in Kyoto

    food culture arts

    The cooking came out of the court and the temples, both still served. Kaiseki is a long sequence of small seasonal courses, timed like theatre; shojin ryori is the Buddhist vegetarian version, tofu, yuba and mountain vegetables, served in some temple grounds. Under it sit obanzai home dishes, the distinctive Kyoto vegetables, matcha with wagashi, and the department store food halls. The top end books out; counters do not.

15. 15

    The Kamogawa riverbank and the summer dining decks

    food scenic

    The river is the city's spine and living room: grass banks where students, families and couples sit at near-perfect intervals down the centre, herons in the shallows, stepping stones at the northern fork. Through the hottest months the west-bank restaurants build noryo-yuka, timber platforms out over the water, and move tables outside for the evening. Walking the bank to the market district is one of the best free hours here.

16. 16

    Maruyama Park and the Higashiyama blossom walk

    scenic nature wildlife

    Kyoto's oldest park, behind the great shrine gate at the top of Shijo, around a huge weeping cherry lit at night in season. Bloom usually starts in late March, peaks in the first ten days of April and holds about a week, but swings a week or more year to year: the country watches published forecasts. Then park, riverbanks, canal and temple grounds fill with hanami parties on blue sheets.

17. 17

    To-ji - the tallest wooden pagoda in Japan and its monthly market

    history shopping

    The five-storey pagoda beside the tracks south of the station is the first thing you see arriving by train and the tallest wooden one in the country, rebuilt to its ninth-century proportions after fires. Inside is a three-dimensional mandala of carved figures from the founding years of esoteric Buddhism in Japan. The grounds host one of the two monthly flea markets, hundreds of stalls of kimono, tools, ceramics and junk.

18. 18

    Kyoto Imperial Palace and its park - the court's last address

    history culture arts

    A vast gravel park in the city centre, open all day and free, the walled palace at its heart and the retired emperor's garden in one corner. The palace is a set route past ceremonial halls and courtyards, home to the emperors until the court left for Tokyo in the nineteenth century. Locals run and picnic here, plum and cherry groves come early: the easiest quiet hour in the centre.

Getting to & around Kyoto

Know before you go