The Most Beautiful Squares, Streets and Monuments in Japan
8 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful squares, streets and monuments in Japan are Hiroshima Peace Memorial, Tokyo Skytree and Tokyo Tower. The list covers 8 squares, streets and monuments. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Japan has a long tradition of naming and framing views: classical poets fixed the famous scenic spots of the islands centuries ago, temple towns grew lanes paced for pilgrims, and the modern city answered with towers that let everyone see Tokyo from above. Beside them stands one of the most sombre memorials of the 20th century, kept deliberately as a ruin.
The Hiroshima Peace Memorial, the gutted dome of a prefectural hall that survived near the hypocentre of the atomic bomb in 1945, is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Tokyo answers with height: Tokyo Tower, opened in 1958 in orange and white, took its cue from the Eiffel Tower, and Tokyo Skytree, opened in 2012 at 634 metres, is the tallest tower in the world.
Kyoto supplies the walking streets. The Philosopher's Walk follows a canal lined with cherry trees between Ginkaku-ji and the Nanzen-ji area, named for the thinker Nishida Kitarō who walked it daily, and Sannenzaka climbs toward Kiyomizu-dera on stone steps between wooden machiya. Nature completes the picture: Amanohashidate, a pine-covered sandbar across a bay on the Sea of Japan, is one of the Three Views of Japan; Kamikōchi opens a high valley of the Northern Alps along the clear Azusa River; and in the Naruto Strait the tides between the Inland Sea and the Pacific spin up whirlpools that can be watched from a bridge walkway above.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hiroshima Peace Memorial | War memorial | ✓ |
| 2 | Tokyo Skytree | Observation tower | |
| 3 | Tokyo Tower | Observation tower | |
| 4 | Philosopher's Walk | Pedestrian street | |
| 5 | Amanohashidate | Scenic viewpoint | |
| 6 | Sannenzaka (Kyoto) | Pedestrian street | |
| 7 | Kamikōchi | Scenic viewpoint | |
| 8 | Naruto whirlpools | Scenic viewpoint |
01 Hiroshima Peace Memorial
Japan · 1.3 km from Hiroshima34.396° N 132.454° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
DXR · CC BY-SA 4.0 After the war, many in Hiroshima wanted the ruin cleared away; others argued it should remain as a memorial. As the Peace Memorial Park took shape around it between 1950 and 1964, the Dome stayed, and in 1966 the city council resolved to preserve it permanently. The mayor, Shinzo Hamai, raised money in Japan and abroad, at one point collecting donations on the streets of Tokyo.
Did you know? When it opened, Hiroshima was a city of mostly two-storey wooden houses, so Letzel's large building immediately became a striking landmark.
02 Tokyo Skytree
Japan · 6.1 km from Tokyo35.710° N 139.811° E
Image by cegoh from Pixabay The form changes as it rises: a three-legged base gives way to a cylinder from about 350 m upwards. Its colour, officially Skytree White, is based on aijiro, a traditional pale indigo-white, and at night LED lighting alternates between Iki, a pale sky blue, and Miyabi, a deep purple.
Did you know? The tower was completed on 29 February 2012, a leap day, at a cost of about 65 billion yen.
03 Tokyo Tower
Japan · 3.2 km from Tokyo35.659° N 139.746° E
Image by LittleMouse from Pixabay Its colours are set by aviation rules: bands of white and international orange, renewed roughly every seven years with some 28,000 litres of paint in a job that takes a year. It remained Japan's tallest structure until Tokyo Skytree was completed in 2012 and took over television broadcasting, though FM radio stations still transmit from the tower.
Did you know? The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake bent the tip of the antenna, and during repairs in 2012 the tower briefly stood only 315 metres tall.
04 Philosopher's Walk
Japan · 4.5 km from Kyoto35.025° N 135.796° E
David Monniaux · CC BY-SA 3.0 The path was created in 1890 as a service road when the canal, which brought water from Lake Biwa to Kyoto, was completed; it was extended in 1912. Two Kyoto University philosophers, Nishida Kitarō and Tanabe Hajime, are said to have walked it daily while working through their ideas, and the path went through several informal names in their honour before the present one was fixed in 1972.
Did you know? Near Hōnen-in a stone erected in 1981 carries a short poem by Nishida Kitarō about walking one's own road, whatever others may do.
05 Amanohashidate
Japan · 18.4 km from Maizuru35.570° N 135.192° E
663highland · CC BY 2.5 The name means roughly the bridge standing in heaven. According to the ancient gazetteer of Tango Province, the god Izanagi set up a ladder here to climb to the heavens, and it fell into the sea while he slept.
Did you know? The pines survived for centuries partly because locals gathered fallen needles and twigs as fuel, keeping the sandy soil too poor for broadleaf trees.
06 Sannenzaka (Kyoto)
Japan · 4.9 km from Kyoto34.996° N 135.781° E
Aporon999 · CC BY-SA 3.0 The name is usually written with characters meaning "safe childbirth slope". Tradition connects it with the Kannon of safe delivery enshrined at Kiyomizu-dera, to which expectant mothers climbed to pray; one story has Empress Kōmyō dreaming of a monk who promised her an easy birth and then finding a small golden image on her pillow, which was later placed at the temple.
Did you know? Its 1972 protection is described as the first legal preservation of an urban townscape anywhere in Japan.
07 Kamikōchi
Japan · 30.3 km from Matsumoto36.247° N 137.633° E
Image by noname from Pixabay Because the valley floor is so level, it holds marshes and ponds such as the Takezawa Marsh, Tashiro Pond and Myōjin Pond, fed by snowmelt and springs that stay cold even in midsummer. Larch forests line the river, and in October the larches turn gold against the first snow on the peaks. Japanese macaques forage along the banks.
Did you know? In 1927 Kamikōchi was chosen as the valley entry among the Eight Views of Japan, ahead of the Tenryū Gorge.
08 Naruto whirlpools
Japan · 21 km from Tokushima34.238° N 134.651° E
Hellbuny · CC BY-SA 3.0 The current here is counted as the fastest in Japan and among the fastest tidal streams anywhere; only a handful of places, such as Saltstraumen and the Moskenstraumen in northern Norway, are faster. Because the flow reverses with the tide, the spectacle comes and goes on a schedule: the water runs in twice a day and out twice a day, and the vortices are strongest around those peaks rather than at slack water.
Did you know? The lower deck of the Ōnaruto Bridge was built strong enough for a double-track Shikoku Shinkansen line, planned in 1973 but never laid.
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 squares, streets and monuments in Japan?
- On our list, Hiroshima Peace Memorial ranks first, followed by Tokyo Skytree and Tokyo Tower.
- What are the Three Views of Japan?
- Matsushima Bay with its pine-covered islets, the sandbar of Amanohashidate, and the island of Miyajima with its floating torii. The list goes back to the 17th-century scholar Hayashi Gahō.
- Why is Tokyo Skytree 634 metres tall?
- The digits 6, 3 and 4 can be read in Japanese as mu-sa-shi, the name of the old province that covered the Tokyo area. The height also made it the tallest tower in the world when it was completed in 2012.
- What causes the Naruto whirlpools?
- Tides in the Seto Inland Sea and the Pacific side are out of step, so water rushes through the narrow Naruto Strait at high speed. Where the fast current meets slower water, whirlpools form that can reach around 20 metres across at spring tides.
- How many squares, streets and monuments are on this list in Japan?
- The list covers 8 squares, streets and monuments.