Mid-range · 12-hour walk · Kyoto
Kyoto in a day: bamboo to Gion
The bamboo grove at dawn, Tenryū-ji, the Golden Pavilion and the rock garden, the shoguns' castle, lunch in Nishiki and the eastern hills into Gion at dusk.
One day is not enough for Kyoto, and everyone who lives there will say so. This route takes the question seriously anyway: the west of the city before the crowds, the north by taxi, the castle in the middle of the day and the temple district in the east for the evening. It needs two taxis, and it needs you in Arashiyama by eight; after nine the bamboo grove is a queue.
The route, stop by stop
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Arashiyama Bamboo Grove
Early is the only time to see it as the photographs promise: tall stems, filtered light and nobody else. It is a path, not a park, and walking it takes ten minutes; the rest is standing still.
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Tenryu-ji
The Zen head temple beside the grove, founded in 1339 and rebuilt many times since. The garden keeps its original design, a pond laid out to borrow the mountains behind it.
45 min here Walk here → -
Kinkaku-ji
Arrive by taxi from the previous stop
Twenty minutes by taxi. The Golden Pavilion is a 1955 reconstruction — a monk burned the original in 1950 — covered in gold leaf above a mirror pond. You see it from the shore, and the path keeps you moving.
45 min here Walk here → -
Ryōan-ji
Twenty minutes' walk west. Fifteen stones in raked gravel, arranged so that from anywhere on the veranda one is always hidden. Sit, which is the only way to use it.
40 min here Walk here → -
Nijō Castle
Arrive by taxi from the previous stop
The shoguns' palace inside the emperor's city, built in 1603. The corridors of the Ninomaru Palace have nightingale floors, laid to squeak underfoot so no one could approach unheard.
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Nishiki Market
Lunch by grazing: four hundred metres of covered lane and more than a hundred stalls — pickles, skewers, tamagoyaki, soy-milk doughnuts. Eating while walking is frowned on here, so stand at the stall.
60 min here Walk here → -
Yasaka Shrine
Across the Kamo river and up Shijō to the vermilion gate at the head of the street. The shrine never closes and its lanterns are lit from dusk.
25 min here Walk here → -
Kiyomizu-dera
Uphill through Ninenzaka and Sannenzaka to the wooden stage built out over the hillside without a single nail. Come in the late afternoon, when the light crosses the valley onto it.
60 min here Walk here → -
Gion
Back down into the old teahouse streets for dinner. Hanamikōji is the street to walk; the private lanes off it are closed to visitors now, and photographing maiko there can cost you a fine.
60 min here Walk here →
More in Kyoto
Every walking route in Kyoto, or the full Kyoto guide for where to stay and what a day costs.