Museum · Higashiyama
Kyoto National Museum
Kyoto's temple treasures and Japanese art, in a Meiji brick building and a new wing by Yoshio Taniguchi.
Look for: Sōtatsu's Wind God and Thunder God, when it is shown.
Closed Mondays
Go further, look closer.
Cities · Asia · 35°00′N 135°46′E
Kyoto
The city of temples and gardens where Japanese aesthetics was invented, and still practised.
Best monthsNovember (autumn leaves) and April (cherry blossom); January for quiet
Art calendarKyoto Experiment (autumn) · KYOTOGRAPHIE (spring)
This guide5 essentials · 5 places off-piste
Essentials
Temple · Higashiyama
Sanjūsangen-dō
A 120-metre wooden hall of the 13th century holding 1,001 gilded statues of the Buddhist deity Kannon, in rows like a choir.
Look for: The 28 guardian deities in front, and the Wind and Thunder Gods at the ends.
Daily
Garden · Northwest Kyoto
Ryōan-ji
The dry garden of fifteen stones on raked gravel: from wherever you sit on the veranda, one is always hidden.
Look for: Count the stones.
Go at opening
Artist house · Gojō
Kawai Kanjirō's House
The potter Kawai Kanjirō's house of 1937, which he designed himself, with his furniture, his pots and his kiln, kept as he left it.
Look for: The climbing kiln at the back.
Closed Mondays
Museum · Okazaki
Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art
One of Japan's oldest public art museums (1933), renovated in 2020 by Jun Aoki with a sunken glass entrance and a contemporary wing.
Look for: The glass slope at the entrance.
Closed Mondays
Off the list
Off-Piste in Kyoto
Rooms, ruins and curiosities: the city's other museum.
Garden · Kitayama
Kyoto Garden of Fine Art
Tadao Ando's open-air garden of ceramic reproductions of masterpieces, including Monet's Water Lilies, under water.
Michelangelo's Last Judgement, seen from below.
Temple · Philosopher's Path
Hōnen-in
A small moss-covered temple off the Philosopher's Path, with two white sand mounds at the gate, raked into new designs with the seasons.
The sand mounds at the entrance.
Architecture · Takaragaike
Kyoto International Conference Center
Sachio Otani's building of 1966: trapezoidal concrete frames by a lake, like a giant temple. The Kyoto Protocol was signed here in 1997.
The garden and the lake.
Market · Tō-ji
Tō-ji market
On the 21st of every month a flea market fills the temple grounds under Japan's tallest wooden pagoda: kimonos, ceramics, tools, pickles.
Go early on the 21st.
Architecture · Takase River
Times building
A small concrete building by Tadao Ando (1984) built right down to the Takase River, with a terrace almost at the level of the water.
Walk the lower terrace.
Nearby
Nara
Tōdai-ji, 45 minutes by train.
Miho Museum
I. M. Pei's museum in the mountains, about an hour away.
If you have one day
Ryōan-ji at opening → the Kyoto Garden of Fine Art → lunch in Okazaki and the KYOCERA Museum → Kawai Kanjirō's House → the Kyoto National Museum and Sanjūsangen-dō across the street.