The Most Beautiful Places in Tokyo
5 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Tokyo are Tokyo Skytree, Tokyo Tower and Aogashima. The list covers 5 places. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Tokyo is far more than a single city. The metropolis runs from the dense wards around the Imperial Palace out to mountain valleys in the west and, unusually, hundreds of kilometres south into the Pacific, where the Izu and Ogasawara island chains belong to the same metropolis. That reach means a list of Tokyo's finest places can hold a twenty-first-century broadcasting tower and a remote volcanic caldera side by side, with centuries of Edo and Meiji heritage in between.
The skyline sets the tone. Tokyo Skytree, completed in 2012, rises to 634 metres and is the tallest tower in the world, its lattice shifting from triangle at the base to circle at the top. Tokyo Tower, the orange-and-white lattice of 1958 modelled on the Eiffel Tower, remains the city's older landmark and the symbol of its postwar rebuilding.
Far from both lies Aogashima, a tiny island in the Izu chain whose village sits on the rim of a double volcanic caldera, with a smaller cone rising from the green bowl inside. Back in the centre, Shinjuku Gyoen began as an imperial garden and now combines formal French, English landscape and traditional Japanese styles, famous for its cherry blossom. In Ueno Park, the Tokyo National Museum, founded in 1872, is the oldest and largest museum in Japan, holding national treasures from swords and lacquerware to Buddhist sculpture.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tokyo Skytree | Observation tower | |
| 2 | Tokyo Tower | Observation tower | |
| 3 | Aogashima | Island | |
| 4 | Shinjuku Gyoen | Urban park | |
| 5 | Tokyo National Museum | Museum |
01 Tokyo Skytree
Japan · 6.1 km from Tokyo35.710° N 139.811° E
Image by cegoh from Pixabay Tokyo Skytree is the tallest tower in the world, a 634 m lattice of steel that Guinness World Records certified in 2011 as the tallest free-standing tower; among all structures, only the Burj Khalifa and Merdeka 118 are taller.
Did you know? While still under construction it overtook Taipei 101 in December 2010 and then the 600-metre Canton Tower in March 2011.
02 Tokyo Tower
Japan · 3.2 km from Tokyo35.659° N 139.746° E
Image by LittleMouse from Pixabay Tokyo Tower was completed in 1958 as a transmitter for the Kantō region and as a symbol of Japan's recovery after the war. 9 metres, overtook its Parisian model by nine metres to become the tallest freestanding tower in the world.
Did you know? Since 1989 lighting designer Motoko Ishii's floodlights have bathed it warm orange in the cooler months and white in summer.
03 Aogashima
Japan32.458° N 139.759° E
Soica2001 ( talk ) · Public domain Seen from the air, Aogashima looks like a volcano that has swallowed a smaller volcano.
Did you know? Volcanic activity was recorded on the island in 1652 and again in the 1670s, a century before the catastrophic eruptions of the 1780s.
04 Shinjuku Gyoen
Japan · 3.5 km from Tokyo35.687° N 139.711° E
Kakidai · CC BY-SA 3.0 Shinjuku Gyoen is a 58-hectare garden set right against the towers of Shinjuku, with a perimeter of about three and a half kilometres, and its charm is the sudden drop in noise once you pass the gate. The ground has been a garden for more than two centuries.
Did you know? The Old Imperial Rest House, a wooden building of 1896 used by the imperial family when visiting the greenhouses, is an Important Cultural Property.
05 Tokyo National Museum
Japan · 4.3 km from Tokyo35.719° N 139.776° E
中徳新星 · CC BY 4.0 The Tokyo National Museum in Ueno Park is Japan's oldest national museum and its largest art museum.
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 Tokyo?
- On our list, Tokyo Skytree ranks first, followed by Tokyo Tower and Aogashima.
- Is Aogashima part of Tokyo?
- Yes. Aogashima is one of the Izu Islands, which belong administratively to the Tokyo Metropolis, so the island counts as a village of Tokyo despite lying far out in the Pacific.
- How tall is Tokyo Skytree?
- Tokyo Skytree is 634 metres tall. It was completed in 2012 and is the tallest tower in the world, serving as a broadcasting tower as well as an observation point.
- What styles of garden are in Shinjuku Gyoen?
- Shinjuku Gyoen combines three styles: a formal French garden, an English landscape garden and a traditional Japanese garden. It was originally an imperial garden and opened to the public after the Second World War.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Tokyo?
- In our collection, the places in Tokyo are most often viewpoints (2), observation towers (2), islands (1) and city parks (1).
- How many places are on this list in Tokyo?
- The list covers 5 places.