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Kyoto, Japan

CITY GUIDE

Kyoto

Temples that open at six, maples that peak in the last week of November, and the crowd arithmetic that decides your day.

37 pages Updated 16 September 2026

Everything we publish on Kyoto, grouped the way the menu groups it. Each section shows what we think you should look at first and lists the rest underneath.

Jump by theme

See and do Eat and drink Stay, and time it right

START HERE

See and do

The sights, the districts they sit in and the things worth booking. Every entry carries the admission as it stands now, the hours, and whether we think it earns the time.

Sights

The gilded Golden Pavilion reflected in Kyoko-chi pond at Kinkaku-ji, Kyoto

Kinkaku-ji

The Golden Pavilion is a twenty-minute one-way walk with one great view in it. Knowing that before you arrive is most of the visit.

¥500 9:00–17:00 Kita-ku

Vermilion torii gates in a tunnel on the Senbon Torii path at Fushimi Inari Taisha

Fushimi Inari Taisha

The gates everyone photographs are a short stretch near the bottom. The shrine that is worth two hours starts where most visitors turn round.

Free Open 24 hours JR Inari

The wooden stage of Kiyomizu-dera projecting over the hillside above Kyoto

Kiyomizu-dera

One temple in Kyoto opens at six in the morning. Using that is the single most effective thing you can do about crowds here.

¥500 Opens 6:00 Higashiyama

Ginkaku-jiThe Silver Pavilion has never been silver, and since April 2026 it costs twice as much as the Golden one. What you actually get for the new price.Nijo CastleThe headline price gets you a moat and a garden. The palace with the nightingale floors and the room where the shogunate ended costs 500 yen more.SanjusangendoA 120-metre hall holding 1,001 gilded Kannon. Nobody can photograph it, so nobody queues to. The most underrated hour in Kyoto.

Museums

The brick Meiji-era Main Building of the Kyoto National Museum

Kyoto National Museum

A 700 yen museum, closed Mondays, open late on Fridays, and dark for weeks at a time between shows. The one Kyoto museum you must check the calendar for.

¥700 9:30–17:00 Higashiyama

Open shelves of manga volumes lining a corridor of the Kyoto International Manga Museum

Kyoto International Manga Museum

A converted primary school with fifty thousand manga on open shelves and no rule against reading all afternoon. Closed Wednesdays, which is the trap.

¥1,200 10:00–17:00 Karasuma Oike

The sunken glass entrance and tiled roof of the Kyoto City Kyocera Museum of Art

Kyoto City Kyocera Museum of Art

A 1933 municipal art museum rebuilt by Aoki Jun, where the entrance hall, the roof terrace and the garden cost nothing at all.

¥730 10:00–18:00 Okazaki

Districts

Wooden machiya facades and lanterns along Hanamikoji street in Gion, Kyoto

Gion

Kyoto's geisha district closed its private alleys to visitors in 2024. What remains is a public street, a shrine, and a great deal of misunderstanding.

Free to walk Best at dusk Gion-Shijo

The bamboo path at Arashiyama with its bamboo fencing on both sides

Arashiyama

Everyone comes for a hundred and fifty metres of fenced bamboo. The two places either side of it are better, quieter and worth the admission.

Saga-Arashiyama ¥500 Tenryu-ji 8:30–17:00

Stone-paved lanes and timber shopfronts on the Ninenzaka slope in Higashiyama, Kyoto

Higashiyama

The eastern hills are where a Kyoto trip really happens. The constraint is not distance, it is that everything up there closes before five.

Free to walk Temples shut 16:30–17:00 Eastern hills

Downtown and Nishiki MarketA four-hundred-metre covered market with a rule most visitors break, and the flat, walkable downtown that surrounds it.

Things to do

A flat-bottomed wooden boat being poled through the rapids of the Hozu gorge

Hozugawa boat ride

Three boatmen pole and row a flat-bottomed boat sixteen kilometres down a gorge. It has been a working river route since the seventeenth century.

¥6,000 About 2 hours Kameoka to Arashiyama

The Shishinden ceremonial hall and white gravel courtyard at the Kyoto Imperial Palace

Kyoto Imperial Palace

The one major Kyoto sight that costs nothing and needs no ticket. Most guides still say you have to apply in advance. You do not.

Free Closed Mondays Imadegawa

White-walled sake brewery warehouses along the Horikawa canal in Fushimi

Fushimi sake district

White-walled brewery warehouses on a canal, a working sake town, and a museum visit that now refuses banknotes.

¥600 9:30–16:30 Chushojima

Walks

The cherry-lined canal of the Philosopher’s Path in eastern Kyoto

The Philosopher’s Path

The best free hour in eastern Kyoto. The direction you walk it in decides whether the temple at the end feels earned or compulsory.

About 2km Free 30–90 minutes

The stepped stone lane of Sannenzaka descending from Kiyomizu-dera at dawn

Kiyomizu-dera to Gion

The best-known walk in Kyoto, and a completely different walk depending on whether you start it at six or at ten.

About 2km Start 6:00 ¥500 temple

EAT AND DRINK

Eat and drink

Where the hours and the prices are published, and where they are not. The dishes are here too, because half of eating well is knowing what a house is for.

Restaurants

The lantern-lit entrance approach to Kikunoi honten in eastern Kyoto

Kikunoi

The most famous kaiseki room in Kyoto. The price is real, the booking is difficult, and lunch is two-thirds cheaper than dinner.

¥25,000 lunch Closed 1st & 3rd Tue Maruyama

A length of saba-zushi wrapped in kombu on a lacquer tray at Izuu in Gion

Izuu

A Gion counter that has been pressing mackerel and kombu onto vinegared rice since 1781. The hours are published. The prices are not.

11:00–22:00 Saba-zushi Gion

Bowls of obanzai side dishes arranged along a counter at a Kyoto izakaya

Kikkoya

Home-style Kyoto cooking at a counter that understands people eating alone. It also lets people smoke, everywhere, all evening.

17:00–23:00 Obanzai Nakagyo

IzusenBuddhist temple cooking, served in stacking lacquer bowls in a sub-temple garden. Open every day of the year except the last four of December.MatsubaA soba house by the Minamiza theatre that put dried herring on buckwheat noodles in 1882 and has been doing it ever since.Okutan KiyomizuSimmering tofu in an earthenware pot, in a garden a few minutes below the busiest temple in Kyoto. Bring patience and check it is open.

What to eat

Cubes of silken tofu simmering in a clear kombu broth in an earthenware donabe, with ponzu and spring onion alongside

Yudofu

The dish Kyoto's water and its temples produced between them. No sauce, no browning, nothing to hide behind.

Tofu Best in winter Temple districts

A kaiseki tray of small seasonal dishes in different ceramics, with sashimi, simmered vegetables and a maple leaf

Kaiseki

A fixed sequence of courses built on the season. The range of prices is enormous and the structure barely changes across it.

8–12 courses ¥4,500 upward 2–3 hours

An array of small obanzai dishes in bowls along a restaurant counter

Obanzai

Simmered vegetables, tofu and preserved fish, cooked in the morning and eaten all day. The everyday counterweight to kaiseki.

Home cooking Evenings Izakaya prices

Nishin sobaA landlocked city's answer to fish. Two days of simmering go into one fillet, and the broth gets better as you eat it.

Bars

Small tasting glasses of sake lined up on a wooden counter

Sake Bar Yoramu

An Israeli sake specialist pouring aged and obscure bottles in 60ml measures, four nights a week, to about ten people at a time.

¥1,600 sets 18:00–24:00 Wed–Sat

A dimly lit cocktail bar counter with a bartender stirring a drink

Bee’s Knees

Kyoto's best-known speakeasy-format cocktail bar. It keeps its hours off the internet, which is either the joke or the problem.

Cocktails Hours not published Kiyamachi

Shelves of antique bottles and curios behind a small cocktail bar counter

L’Escamoteur

Apothecary bottles, conjuring props and flame, in a tiny room off Kiyamachi. Nobody can tell you when it opens, including the bar.

Cocktails Hours not published Shijo Kiyamachi

STAY AND TIME IT

Stay, and time it right

Rooms with the trade-off each one makes stated rather than buried, and the festivals that decide which week you should be here at all.

Where to stay

A timber ryokan building on the wooded bank of the Oi river at Arashiyama

Hoshinoya Kyoto

Twenty-five rooms on the Oi river with no road to them. The boat is the only way in, and the price is whatever the date says it is.

Ryokan Arrive by boat Arashiyama

A tatami guest room at a traditional Kyoto ryokan with a low table and garden view

Hiiragiya

Two centuries of the same family, twenty-odd rooms, and a service tradition that survives because it never had to be revived.

Ryokan Since 1818 Nakagyo

The brick facade and arcade of the former Central Telephone Office housing Ace Hotel Kyoto

Ace Hotel Kyoto

The best-located big hotel in Kyoto, in a restored Modernist telephone exchange with a courtyard that anyone can walk into.

213 rooms Karasuma Oike Nakagyo

Piece HostelDorms and private rooms done properly, in the two most useful locations in Kyoto. The March 2026 tax change made the budget end relatively better value.

Events

A tall wooden yamaboko float lit by lanterns on a closed Kyoto street at night

Gion Matsuri

Japan's most famous festival runs on fixed dates that ignore the calendar. The nights before the processions are the part worth planning around.

17 & 24 July Free to watch Downtown

Costumed participants in historical dress in the Jidai Matsuri procession in Kyoto

Jidai Matsuri

Twelve hundred people in twelve centuries of costume walk across Kyoto at noon. Two hours later a mountain village sets fire to itself.

22 October Departs noon Free to watch

The rest of the trip

The other cities, and the national pages the routes between them live on.

Routes 2 Autumn colour 3 Logistics 3 Worth it? 123 Tokyo 37 Osaka 37