Kyoto: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
Kyoto was the capital of Japan for one thousand and seventy-four years, from 794 to 1868, and it is the reason the city has sixteen hundred Buddhist temples and four hundred Shinto shrines inside one grid. It was also first on the American atomic target list in 1945, and it was taken off — the Secretary of War had been there on his honeymoon and argued the Japanese would never forgive its destruction. Everything in this walk exists because of that argument. Three hours, and the eastern hills are the spine of it.
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A short history of Kyoto
In 794 Emperor Kammu moved the capital of Japan here and called it Heian-kyō, 'the capital of peace and tranquillity'. The city was laid out on a grid of straight streets on the model of the Chinese city of Chang'an. For more than a thousand years the emperors resided here, even when real power had passed to the shoguns. The Ōnin War, from 1467 to 1477, destroyed much of the city. In 1868 the emperor moved to Tokyo, and Kyoto ceased to be the capital. In the Second World War it was removed from the list of targets for the atomic bomb, and so about 1,600 Buddhist temples and hundreds of Shinto shrines survive here. In 1997 the Kyoto Protocol on climate change was signed here.
The ten best sights in Kyoto
1Kinkaku-ji500 yen, and the building you see was rebuilt in 1955 after a monk burned it
2Ginkaku-ji500 yen, and it was never covered in silver despite the name
3Kiyomizu-dera400 yen, a stage 13 metres up built without a single nail
4Fushimi InariFree, about 10,000 gates, and the full loop up the mountain is two hours
5Ryōan-ji600 yen, fifteen rocks, and you can never see all fifteen at once
6Sanjūsangen-dō600 yen, 1,001 statues in a hall 120 metres long, and no photographs
7Nijō Castle1,300 yen, and the corridors squeak on purpose to give away intruders
8Imperial PalaceFree, no booking needed since 2016, and the emperors lived here until 1868
9Tō-ji500 yen, and its pagoda at 55 metres is the tallest wooden tower in Japan
10Nanzen-jiFree grounds, and a brick aqueduct from 1890 runs straight through it
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What is an audio walk?
Tours in Kyoto →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Kyoto:
Free walking tours in Kyoto
The city the bomb was taken off
Kyoto was the capital of Japan for one thousand and seventy-four years, from 794 to 1868, and it is the reason the city has sixteen hundred Buddhist temples and four hundred Shinto shrines inside one grid. It was also first on the American atomic target list in 1945, and it was taken off — the Secretary of War had been there on his honeymoon and argued the Japanese would never forgive its destruction. Everything in this walk exists because of that argument. Three hours, and the eastern hills are the spine of it.
- Kiyomizu-dera · The great stage stands thirteen metres above the hillside on a frame of one hundred and sixty-eight pillars joined without a single nail. The Japanese phrase for taking a reckless decision is to jump off the stage at Kiyomizu — and the temple’s own Edo-period records list two hundred and thirty-four people who actually did it, of whom about eighty-five per cent survived.
- Sannenzaka · The stepped lane down from the temple is a preservation district: the wooden fronts, the roof tiles and even the shop signs are regulated, and the overhead cables were buried to get them out of the view. The name means third-year slope, and the superstition is that tripping on it brings three years of bad luck.
- Yasaka Pagoda · Forty-six metres of five-storey timber standing in the middle of a residential lane, and it is all that is left of a temple founded, by tradition, in 589 — the rest burned and was never rebuilt. The pagoda has been rebuilt five times, most recently in 1440, and people live in the houses touching it.
- Kōdai-ji · Built in 1606 by Nene, the widow of the warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who had unified Japan and then died leaving a five-year-old heir. She became a nun, built this temple for him, and lived in it for nineteen years watching the family that destroyed hers rule the country from Edo.
- Yasaka Shrine · Founded in 656 and the shrine behind the Gion Matsuri, the festival that began in 869 when a plague was raging and the court sent sixty-six halberds through the streets, one for each province, to drive it out. The festival has run for eleven hundred years and the floats are still built without nails each July.
- Hanamikoji · The main street of Gion Kōbu, where about sixty geiko and maiko still work — in Kyoto they are called geiko, not geisha. Since 2019 the private lanes off it have been closed to photography with a ten-thousand-yen fine, after years of visitors blocking the women on their way to appointments.
Fifteen rocks and a path along a canal
Zen arrived in Kyoto in the twelfth century and by the fifteenth the temples were making gardens that were not meant to be walked in at all — raked gravel, a few stones, a wall, and nothing else. You sit on a wooden veranda and look at it. This walk runs along the eastern hills from one of those gardens to another, down a canal path that a philosopher used to walk every morning for forty years. Three hours, almost all of it flat.
- Ginkaku-ji · A shogun built it in 1482 as a retirement villa and died before the silver leaf he had planned for it was ever applied — so the Silver Pavilion is bare wood and always has been. The cone of raked sand in the garden is a metre and eighty high and is said to represent Mount Fuji; it is raked back into shape every morning.
- Philosopher’s Path · Two kilometres along a canal dug in 1890 to bring water from Lake Biwa over the mountains. Nishida Kitarō, Japan’s best-known modern philosopher, walked it every morning on his way to the university and the cherry trees along it were planted by a painter who lived there. The name was only given to it in 1972.
- Eikandō · The Amida statue here is looking backwards over its left shoulder, which no other Amida does. The temple’s story is that in 1082 the abbot Eikan was walking in prayer when the statue stepped down and walked ahead of him; he stopped, and it turned to look back and said keep going — and it stayed in that position.
- Nanzen-ji · A red brick aqueduct runs straight through the middle of this thirteenth-century temple, which looks like a mistake and was a deliberate one — it carries the Lake Biwa canal, built in 1890, and the government put it through the grounds because Kyoto had just lost the emperor to Tokyo and needed to prove it was still a modern city.
- Kennin-ji · The oldest Zen temple in Kyoto, founded in 1202 by the monk Eisai, who had just come back from China with something else as well: tea seeds, and the practice of drinking powdered green tea. Tea in Japan starts here. The twin dragons on the ceiling of the lecture hall were painted in 2002 and took two years.
- Ryōan-ji · Fifteen rocks in raked gravel, twenty-five metres by ten, and nobody knows who made it or exactly when. The arrangement is such that from any point on the veranda you can see only fourteen of the fifteen; to see all of them you would have to be above the garden, which in Buddhist terms is a state you have not reached.
Ten thousand gates and a bamboo wall
Kyoto is a basin with mountains on three sides, and the two places everybody comes for are at opposite corners of it — a mountain of orange gates in the south-east, and a bamboo grove and a river in the west. Both are free, both are unbearable between ten and four, and both are entirely different at seven in the morning. This is the day to start early and use the trains. Half a day, and the two halves are forty minutes apart.
- Fushimi Inari · Something like ten thousand torii gates run up the mountain, and every one was paid for by a business — the donor’s name and the date are written on the back of each post, which you only see on the way down. A small gate costs around four hundred thousand yen and a large one over a million, and there is a waiting list.
- Tō-ji · Founded in 796, two years after the city itself, and its five-storey pagoda at fifty-five metres is the tallest wooden tower in Japan. It has burned down four times, always by lightning, and the present one is from 1644. On the twenty-first of each month the grounds hold a flea market that has run since the thirteenth century.
- Tenryū-ji · The garden was laid out in the 1340s by the monk Musō Soseki and has not been redesigned since, which makes it the oldest garden in Japan surviving in its original form. It borrows the mountains behind it as part of the composition — a technique called shakkei, and this is the example everyone is taught.
- Arashiyama Bamboo Grove · The grove is about five hundred metres of path, and the thing it is actually famous for is not the look of it but the sound — the Japanese Ministry of the Environment put it on an official list of one hundred soundscapes to be preserved, which is a real list with a legal basis.
- Togetsukyō Bridge · The name means the bridge crossing to the moon, and it was given by an emperor in the thirteenth century who watched the moon move across the sky above it as he crossed. A bridge has stood here since 836; the present one looks wooden and is a concrete frame clad in timber, built in 1934.
- Ōkōchi Sansō · Ōkōchi Denjirō was a silent film star who played samurai, and he spent thirty years and most of what he earned building this garden on the hillside above the bamboo. The ticket includes a bowl of matcha, almost nobody goes in, and the view from the top is the one Arashiyama is supposed to look like.
Getting to Kyoto and getting around
- Kyoto Station · The shinkansen to Tokyo is 2h15, and the station building is fifteen storeys of glass
- Kawaramachi Station · The Hankyu line to Osaka in 45 minutes, and the shopping streets start above it
- Kyoto Tower · Opposite the station, and every city bus route is named from here
- Demachiyanagi · The line to Kurama and Kibune starts here, and it takes 30 minutes
Cheap eats in Kyoto
Eight counters where Kyoto eats standing, or at least quickly. The city’s own cooking is obanzai — small vegetable dishes made from what the temples and the merchants could get in a basin with no sea, which is why Kyoto food is tofu, pickles, yuba and roots rather than fish. Lunch is cheap even in famous places: a soba shop is a thousand yen and a two-hundred-year-old one is fifteen hundred. The tea is from Uji, twenty minutes south.
- Nishiki Market · Open 9 to 6, and most shops shut on Wednesday
- Honke Owariya · About 1,500 yen, lunch only, and there is always a queue
- Ōmen Ginkakuji · Udon with eight vegetables served separately, and about 1,400 yen
- Nishiki Warai · Okonomiyaki cooked on the counter in front of you, about 1,200 yen
- Ippodo Tea · Tea from 1,000 yen a tin, and the tasting room is free
- Pontochō · An alley of about a hundred restaurants, and decks over the river from May
- Teramachi arcade · Covered for a kilometre, and the old tea and knife shops are at the north end
- Gekkeikan Sake Museum · 600 yen with three tastings, 15 minutes by train south
Museums in Kyoto
- Kyoto National Museum · 700 yen, closed Mondays, and the special shows cost more
- Sanjūsangen-dō · 600 yen, and photography is forbidden inside
- Nijō Castle · 1,300 yen, and the inner palace closes before the grounds
- Manga Museum · 1,200 yen, in a 1929 primary school, and 50,000 volumes to read
- Kyocera Museum of Art · From 730 yen, a 1933 building reopened in 2020, and the roof terrace is free
- Kyoto Railway Museum · 1,500 yen, 53 trains including a steam roundhouse still in use
- Nijō-jō Ninomaru garden · In the castle ticket, and it was laid out for one shogun visit in 1626
- Byōdō-in · 700 yen, 25 minutes by train, and the museum behind is included
Nature and day trips near Kyoto
Kyoto sits in a basin closed on three sides by mountains, which is why it is unbearable in August and freezing in January, and also why the walks start where the streets end. Two mountain villages an hour north are a different climate altogether, and the maples there turn three weeks before the city.
- Kurama to Kibune · 500 yen for the temple, 30 minutes by train from Demachiyanagi
- Kifune Shrine · Free, and the kawadoko lunches need booking weeks ahead
- Sanzen-in · 700 yen, an hour north in Ōhara, and the moss garden is the reason
- Kamo River · Free, and the best stretch is between Sanjō and Shijō
- Kamogawa Delta · Free, where two rivers join, and turtle-shaped stepping stones cross it
- Kyoto Gyoen · Free, 65 hectares of gravel and pine, and almost nobody walks it
- Botanical Gardens · 200 yen, from 1924, and the oldest public one in Japan
- Arashiyama Monkey Park · 600 yen, 20 minutes uphill, and the humans stand in the cage
Things to do in Kyoto with kids
- Kyoto Railway Museum · 1,500 yen, a working steam roundhouse, and a short ride included
- Kyoto Aquarium · 2,400 yen, by the station, and a dolphin show every two hours
- Manga Museum · 1,200 yen, and you may sit on the lawn and read all day
- Arashiyama Monkey Park · 600 yen, 120 wild macaques, and you buy their food inside
- Nara · 45 minutes by train, 1,200 deer that bow for a biscuit, and they bite
- Kyoto Tower · 900 yen, 100 metres, and telescopes that are free up there
- Kamogawa Delta · Free, stepping stones shaped like turtles, and shallow water
- Fushimi Inari · Free, and the fox statues hold keys to the rice granary in their mouths
Holy places in Kyoto
There are around sixteen hundred Buddhist temples and four hundred Shinto shrines inside the city, and seventeen separate sites make up the single UNESCO listing. Most charge between four hundred and seven hundred yen, most close at four thirty, and the ones that matter least on a list are often the ones worth sitting in.
- Kinkaku-ji · 500 yen, and you walk one way round and out — there is no going back
- Fushimi Inari · Free, open all night, and the full mountain loop is two hours
- Nishi Hongan-ji · Free, and the Goei-dō holds a thousand people on tatami
- Chion-in · Free grounds, and the gate is the largest wooden gate in Japan
- Daitoku-ji · Free to walk between 22 sub-temples, and four open their gardens
- Ninna-ji · 500 yen, and its dwarf cherries are the last in Kyoto to bloom
- Myōshin-ji · Free to walk, 46 sub-temples, and almost no visitors
- Heian Shrine · Free, and the garden behind it is 600 yen and worth it
Nightlife in Kyoto
Kyoto is not a late city and does not pretend to be — the temples shut at half past four and most of the centre is quiet by eleven. What it has instead is the river in summer, an alley of a hundred small restaurants, and the standing bars around Nishiki that open at five and fill with people who finished work at four. Nothing needs booking except the river decks.
- Pontochō · From about 4,000 yen a head, and the decks need booking
- Kamo River · Free, bring your own, and the bank fills from seven in summer
- Kiyamachi · The canal street behind Pontochō, and this is where it stays open
- Nishiki Warai · Okonomiyaki and beer at a counter, and open till eleven
- Gion · The teahouses are private and introduction only, and the street is free
- Maruyama Park · Free, and in April the whole city drinks under the lit cherry tree
- Kyoto Tower · 900 yen, open till nine, and the bar in the basement is a local one
- Shinkyōgoku · The covered arcade, shops till nine, and the cinema at the end
Frequently asked questions about Kyoto
What is there to see in Kyoto?
The top sights in Kyoto are Kinkaku-ji, Ginkaku-ji and Kiyomizu-dera. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Kyoto?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Kyoto without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Kyoto?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Kyoto, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: The city the bomb was taken off.
How do you get to Kyoto and get around?
The main ways are Kyoto Station, Kawaramachi Station and Kyoto Tower. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Kyoto, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Kyoto that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Kyoto for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.