Nara Park & Kasuga

A look around

What you’ll be living next to. Swipe through.

1/6

Where it sits

The circle is Nara Park & Kasuga and roughly a 10-minute walk around it.

How far is everything?

From the middle of this area to the city's headline sights — pick your own on the city page and these become your list.

• Kofuku-ji & the five-story pagoda9 min walk764 m
• Gango-ji12 min walk1.0 km
• Nakatanidou mochi pounding12 min walk1.0 km
• Nara flavours — kakinoha-zushi & sake14 min walk1.1 km
• Naramachi old town15 min walk1.3 km
• Horyu-ji37 min taxi12.4 km

On your doorstep

What you’re living next to if you stay here.

• 1.Todai-ji & the Great Buddha — One of the world's largest wooden buildings, sheltering a colossal 15-metre bronze Buddha cast in 752 — awe on a scale nothing prepares you for. Squeeze through the 'Buddha's nostril' pillar for luck; the essential Nara sight.
• 2.Nara Park & the deer — Over a thousand tame sika deer wander the vast park, considered sacred messengers — feed them crackers, watch them bow, and stroll the lawns between the temples. Free, magical and unlike anywhere else; the image everyone brings home.
• 3.Kasuga Taisha — Nara's grand vermilion shrine at the foot of the sacred forest, famous for thousands of bronze and stone lanterns lining its approaches and halls. Deeply atmospheric, especially when the lanterns are lit for the festivals.
• 6.Isuien Garden — An exquisite strolling garden that 'borrows' the distant temple gate and hills as its backdrop, with ponds, tea houses and moss. A serene, beautifully composed hour, and a small museum of ancient art alongside.
• 7.Mount Wakakusa — The grassy hill rising behind the park — a short, steep climb (in season) to a panorama over Nara's temples and the plain, with deer grazing the slopes. The city's best view and a fine picnic spot.
• 8.Nigatsu-do Hall — A wooden hall of Todai-ji perched on the hillside, its veranda giving a free, sweeping view over the Great Buddha Hall and the city to the sunset. Quiet, uphill and worth the short climb; the setting of the Omizutori fire ritual.
• 9.Nara National Museum — The country's finest collection of Buddhist art, superbly displayed in the park — statues, scrolls and ritual objects spanning centuries. The best place to make sense of what you're seeing in the temples; a serene rainy-day choice.
• 10.Yoshikien Garden — Three small gardens in one — pond, moss and tea-ceremony flowers — tucked beside Isuien and often overlooked, so blissfully quiet. Free to foreign visitors and a lovely, calm counterpoint to the busy park.
• 12.Kasuga primeval forest walk — Behind Kasuga Taisha lies a sacred forest untouched for over a thousand years — quiet trails through giant cedars and stone-lantern paths, cool even in summer. A wild, contemplative walk few day-trippers find.