The Most Beautiful Places in Kyōto Prefecture
19 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Kyōto Prefecture are Arashiyama Bamboo Grove, Kiyomizu-dera and Fushimi Inari-taisha. The list covers 19 places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Kyoto was Japan's imperial capital for more than a thousand years, from its founding as Heian-kyō in 794 until the court moved to Tokyo in the 1860s. Emperors, shoguns, aristocrats and Buddhist schools all built here, and the city in its basin, ringed by wooded hills, kept an unusual concentration of temples, shrines, villas and gardens. Many of the forms now seen as typically Japanese, from the dry rock garden to the tea house, were refined in Kyoto.
On the eastern hills, Kiyomizu-dera projects a great wooden stage over a slope on tall pillars, and the Yasaka Pagoda rises above the old streets below. Fushimi Inari-taisha leads up its mountain through tunnels of thousands of vermilion torii gates. Kinkaku-ji, the Golden Pavilion, is covered in gold leaf and reflected in its pond; it was rebuilt after a fire in 1950. Ginkaku-ji, the Silver Pavilion, was never silvered but is known for its sand garden and moss. Along the Philosopher's Walk, a canal path links these temples under cherry trees.
Ryōan-ji holds the most famous dry garden in Japan, fifteen stones set in raked gravel. Tō-ji's five-storey pagoda is the tallest wooden pagoda in the country. Nijō Castle, built for the Tokugawa shoguns, is known for its painted halls and creaking nightingale floors. In the west, the Arashiyama Bamboo Grove lines a path with tall stalks; in Uji, the Byōdō-in's Phoenix Hall appears on the ten-yen coin; and the Katsura Imperial Villa is a model of garden design.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arashiyama Bamboo Grove | Forest | |
| 2 | Kiyomizu-dera | Temple | ✓ |
| 3 | Fushimi Inari-taisha | Shinto shrine | |
| 4 | Kinkaku-ji Temple | Temple | ✓ |
| 5 | Nijō Castle | Castle | ✓ |
| 6 | Ginkaku-ji Temple | Temple | ✓ |
| 7 | Tō-ji Temple | Pagoda | ✓ |
| 8 | Philosopher's Walk | Pedestrian street | |
| 9 | Byōdō-in Temple | Temple | ✓ |
| 10 | Ryōan-ji Temple | Historic garden | ✓ |
| 11 | Katsura Imperial Villa | Palace | |
| 12 | Amanohashidate | Scenic viewpoint | |
| 13 | Yasaka Pagoda (Hōkan-ji), Kyoto | Pagoda | |
| 14 | Sannenzaka (Kyoto) | Pedestrian street | |
| 15 | Sanjūsangen-dō Temple | Temple | |
| 16 | Tōfuku-ji Temple | Historic garden | |
| 17 | Saihō-ji (Moss Temple) | Temple | ✓ |
| 18 | Ine-ura | Most beautiful village | |
| 19 | Keage Incline | Boat lift |
01 Arashiyama Bamboo Grove
Japan · 7.8 km from Kyoto35.009° N 135.667° E
Naokijp · CC BY-SA 4.0 On the western edge of Kyoto, behind the temples of Arashiyama, a narrow path runs for a few hundred metres through a dense stand of giant bamboo. The stems are mōsō bamboo, the largest of the species grown in Japan, and they rise straight and close on both sides of the lane until their crowns meet overhead.
Did you know? The stems usually stand 10 to 20 metres tall, occasionally reaching 25 metres, with a diameter of up to about 20 centimetres.
02 Kiyomizu-dera
Japan · 5.3 km from Kyoto34.995° N 135.785° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by JordyMeow from Pixabay Kiyomizu-dera, the "Pure Water Temple", stands on the slopes of Mount Otowa on Kyoto's eastern edge. It is one of the few temples in the city older than Kyoto itself as a capital.
Did you know? The hidden main statue of the eleven-headed, thousand-armed Kannon is displayed to the public only once every 33 years.
03 Fushimi Inari-taisha
Japan · 7.5 km from Kyoto34.967° N 135.773° E
Image by Pexels from Pixabay Fushimi Inari-taisha is best known for a single image: a path climbing a wooded hillside inside an unbroken tunnel of vermilion torii gates, glowing in the filtered light under the cedars. The gates — thousands of them along the mountain trails — are gifts.
Did you know? Tens of thousands of small stone altars line the mountain paths, each set up by worshippers for their own personal Inari and engraved with its name.
04 Kinkaku-ji Temple
Japan · 2 km from Kyoto35.039° N 135.728° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by siamkop from Pixabay The ground this pavilion stands on was a private retirement estate before it was ever a temple.
Did you know? The pavilion served as the model for the Silver Pavilion, Ginkaku-ji, built by Yoshimitsu's grandson Yoshimasa, who even borrowed the names of its upper floors.
05 Nijō Castle
Japan · 2 km from Kyoto35.014° N 135.748° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by Moechann from Pixabay Nijō Castle is a castle built to impress rather than to fight. In 1601 Tokugawa Ieyasu ordered the lords of western Japan to pay for a residence in Kyoto for the Tokugawa shoguns. The shoguns ruled from Edo, but the emperor's court remained in Kyoto.
Did you know? Builders absorbed part of the old Shinsen-en, a garden of the original imperial palace, and used its abundant water for the castle ponds.
06 Ginkaku-ji Temple
Japan · 4.6 km from Kyoto35.027° N 135.798° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by Michelle-Maria from Pixabay Ginkaku-ji, the "Temple of the Silver Pavilion", is officially called Jishō-ji and belongs to the Shōkoku-ji branch of Rinzai Zen. It stands at the foot of the Higashiyama hills on Kyoto's eastern edge. It began as the retirement villa of the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa, who started planning it around 1460.
Did you know? Scientific analysis during the restoration confirmed that no silver leaf had ever been applied, and it revealed traces of coloured patterns on the upper-storey eaves.
07 Tō-ji Temple
Japan · 5.7 km from Kyoto34.981° N 135.748° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Kakidai · CC BY-SA 4.0 Tō-ji, the East Temple, is one of the few survivors of Kyoto's founding plan. It was established in 796, two years after the capital moved here, as one of a pair of state temples flanking the great southern gate of the city; its twin, the West Temple, vanished long ago.
Did you know? When Heian-kyō was laid out, Buddhist temples were largely kept out of the new capital, so Tō-ji and its twin Sai-ji were rare official exceptions.
08 Philosopher's Walk
Japan · 4.5 km from Kyoto35.025° N 135.796° E
David Monniaux · CC BY-SA 3.0 5 km that follows a narrow branch of the Lake Biwa Canal along the foot of Kyoto's eastern hills, from the Ginkakuji bridge near the Silver Pavilion (Ginkaku-ji) south to the Nyakuōji bridge towards Nanzen-ji.
Did you know? The present name was chosen in 1972 by local residents as part of a campaign to preserve the path from development.
09 Byōdō-in Temple
Japan · 14.1 km from Ōtsu34.889° N 135.808° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by jamie_nakamura from Pixabay Byōdō-in is the temple on the Japanese ten-yen coin, and the building on that coin, the Phoenix Hall, has stood beside its pond in Uji since 1053.
Did you know? The hall faces east across the Aji-ike pond, so that the Pure Land it represents lies symbolically on the far side of the water.
10 Ryōan-ji Temple
Japan · 2.7 km from Kyoto35.034° N 135.718° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
663highland · CC BY-SA 4.0 Fifteen stones, a rectangle of raked white gravel, a little moss and an old clay wall: the rock garden of Ryōan-ji is one of the most famous gardens in Japan, and one of the smallest.
Did you know? One partly buried stone at the back bears two carved names, Kotarō and Hirokojirō, thought to be those of low-caste labourers who worked on the garden.
11 Katsura Imperial Villa
Japan · 6.4 km from Kyoto34.984° N 135.709° E
John Chang · CC BY-SA 3.0 Katsura Imperial Villa is a seventeenth-century princely retreat on the western edge of Kyoto, beside the Katsura River, and it is widely regarded as one of the supreme achievements of Japanese architecture and garden design.
Did you know? A priest who visited Katsura in 1624 wrote that it offered the finest view in Japan.
12 Amanohashidate
Japan · 18.4 km from Maizuru35.570° N 135.192° E
663highland · CC BY 2.5 In the north of Kyoto Prefecture, a narrow ribbon of sand and pine trees runs straight across the water, dividing Miyazu Bay from the inner lagoon known as the Aso Sea.
Did you know? The Isoshimizu well gives fresh water although the sea lies on both sides, thanks to a lens of fresh groundwater beneath the sandbar.
13 Yasaka Pagoda (Hōkan-ji), Kyoto
Japan · 4.7 km from Kyoto34.999° N 135.779° E
663highland · CC BY 2.5 The five-tiered pagoda of Hōkan-ji rises above the roofs of an old residential quarter, its sloping eaves stacked one over another, and for many people it is the image of old Kyoto.
Did you know? After lightning destroyed it in 1291, the pagoda was rebuilt in 1309 with the support of the retired Emperor Go-Uda.
14 Sannenzaka (Kyoto)
Japan · 4.9 km from Kyoto34.996° N 135.781° E
Aporon999 · CC BY-SA 3.0 Sannenzaka is a short, steep lane of stone steps and paving that climbs through the Higashiyama district of eastern Kyoto towards the hillside temple of Kiyomizu-dera.
Did you know? Among the women said to have climbed to Kiyomizu-dera to pray for a safe birth was the wife of the warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi.
15 Sanjūsangen-dō Temple
Japan · 5.3 km from Kyoto34.988° N 135.772° E
663highland · CC BY 2.5 Nothing quite prepares a visitor for the inside of Sanjusangen-do. The long wooden hall in eastern Kyoto, about 120 metres from end to end, holds one thousand standing statues of Kannon, the bodhisattva of compassion, ranked in rows on tiered platforms that run the full length of the building.
Did you know? Before the fire of 1249 the complex also had a five-storey pagoda and further halls, none of which were rebuilt.
16 Tōfuku-ji Temple
Japan · 6.7 km from Kyoto34.976° N 135.774° E
PlusMinus · CC BY-SA 3.0 Tōfuku-ji is a great Zen monastery in southeastern Kyoto, but it is its gardens and its ravine of maples that most people come to see.
Did you know? Its Muromachi-period communal latrine, nicknamed the hundred toilets because many monks used it at once, is the oldest and largest surviving Zen latrine in Japan.
17 Saihō-ji (Moss Temple)
Japan · 7.3 km from Kyoto34.992° N 135.684° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Ivanoff~commonswiki · CC BY-SA 3.0 Saihō-ji, better known as Koke-dera, the Moss Temple, lies at the foot of the western hills of Kyoto, and its garden is one of the most celebrated in Japan.
Did you know? The temple burned in 1469 during the Ōnin War, when the commander Hosokawa Katsumoto made it his camp.
18 Ine-ura
Japan · 25.3 km from Maizuru35.675° N 135.287° E
Naokijp · CC BY-SA 4.0 Along the shore of a sheltered bay at the tip of the Tango Peninsula, some 230 wooden boathouses stand shoulder to shoulder at the very edge of the water, their ground floors open to the sea so that boats can be hauled straight inside.
Did you know? The town of Ine was once renowned as a whaling port on the Sea of Japan.
19 Keage Incline
Japan · 4.8 km from Kyoto35.008° N 135.791° E
Asturio Cantabrio · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Keage Incline is a railway for boats. Between 1891 and 1948 it carried cargo and passenger boats on flat wagons up and down a 36-metre drop at the western end of the Lake Biwa Canal, the great engineering project that brought water from Japan's largest lake over the hills into Kyoto.
Did you know? After the rails were lifted from 1973, the incline was restored in 1977, and two replica boat carriages now stand on the track.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in Kyōto Prefecture?
- On our list, Arashiyama Bamboo Grove ranks first, followed by Kiyomizu-dera and Fushimi Inari-taisha.
- Why does Fushimi Inari have so many torii gates?
- Each gate is donated by a person or business, usually in thanks or hope for prosperity, since Inari is the kami of rice and commerce. Over centuries the donations have formed long tunnels of gates up the mountain.
- Why is the Silver Pavilion not silver?
- Ginkaku-ji was built for the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa as a retreat modelled on the Golden Pavilion, but it was never covered in silver. The name came into use later.
- What are the nightingale floors at Nijō Castle?
- They are corridor floors that chirp when walked on, as nails beneath the boards rub against clamps. The sound is often explained as a warning against intruders.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Kyōto Prefecture?
- In our collection, the places in Kyōto Prefecture are most often temples (6), historic gardens (2), pagodas (2) and streets (2).
- How many places are on this list in Kyōto Prefecture?
- The list covers 19 places.