Kyoto · Sights

Best Museum in Kyoto

13 places, each checked by our team.

• Fukuda Art Museum 福田美術館Arashiyama — A modern art museum by the Oi River in Arashiyama showing Japanese paintings from the Edo to modern periods, with a riverside cafe.
• Gekkeikan Okura Sake Museum 月桂冠大倉記念館Fushimi — A sake museum in a historic Fushimi brewery building, showing traditional brewing tools and ending with a three-sake tasting.
• Kawai Kanjiro's House 河井寛次郎記念館Gojo-zaka / Higashiyama — The preserved home, studio and climbing kiln of the great mingei potter Kawai Kanjiro, a warm wooden house full of his ceramics, carvings and…
• Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art 京都市京セラ美術館Okazaki — Japan's oldest surviving public art museum, a 1933 Imperial Crown-style landmark reborn in 2020 with a glass "glass ribbon" entrance by Jun Aoki,…
• Kyoto International Manga Museum 京都国際マンガミュージアムKarasuma Oike — A 1929 elementary school turned manga library and museum, with a 200-metre "Wall of Manga" of 50,000 volumes you can pull out and read on the lawn.
• Kyoto Museum of Crafts and Design 京都伝統産業ミュージアムOkazaki — A free basement museum in Okazaki showcasing 74 of Kyoto's traditional crafts, from Nishijin weaving to Kiyomizu ware, with live artisan…
• Kyoto National Museum 京都国立博物館Higashiyama-Shichijo — Kyoto's great museum of Japanese art and temple treasures, split between a red-brick 1897 Meiji hall and Yoshio Taniguchi's serene Heisei Chishinkan…
• Kyoto Railway Museum 京都鉄道博物館Umekoji — One of Japan's largest railway museums, with 54 trains including the first Shinkansen, a working roundhouse of steam locomotives and a short steam…
• Lake Biwa Canal Museum 琵琶湖疏水記念館Okazaki / Keage — A free museum at the Keage end of the Lake Biwa Canal telling how 1890s engineers carried lake water to Kyoto, powering Japan's first commercial…
• National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto (MOMAK) 京都国立近代美術館Okazaki — Fumihiko Maki's crisp gridded museum facing the Heian torii, with superb holdings of Kawai Kanjiro ceramics, Kyoto Nihonga and modern crafts, plus a…
• Nintendo Museum ニンテンドーミュージアムOgura / Uji — Nintendo's own museum in Uji, in the factory where it once made playing cards, with a wall-to-wall history of every console and playable giant…
• Tale of Genji Museum 宇治市源氏物語ミュージアムUji — Uji's museum devoted to the world's first novel, whose final ten chapters are set in Uji, with full-size replicas of Heian interiors and a short…
• The Museum of Kyoto 京都府京都文化博物館Sanjo / Karasuma Oike — Kyoto Prefecture's museum of the city's history and culture, partly housed in a 1906 red-brick former Bank of Japan branch.