Kyoto Imperial Palace

The route runs from the Seishomon gate past the Shodaibunoma waiting rooms, through the great gate of the Kenreimon, and into the gravel courtyard in front of the Shishinden, the hall of state — a wide cypress-bark-roofed building with a cherry tree on one side of the steps and a mandarin orange on the other, where emperors were enthroned as recently as the Taisho and Showa accessions. Beyond it stands the Seiryoden, the older residential hall, and then the Oikeniwa pond garden, which is the prettiest part of the visit and the one nobody photographs.

What you are looking at is mostly a nineteenth-century rebuild in ninth-century style: the compound burned repeatedly, and the present buildings date from 1855, deliberately reconstructed in the Heian manner. That is not a disappointment so much as the point — this is what the court thought its own architecture should look like.

How it differs from Nijo Castle

Nijo is a display of power: gold on the gates, tigers on the screens, a corridor built to sing under an intruder's foot. The palace is the opposite — unpainted timber, low buildings, gravel, restraint. The two are twenty-five minutes apart and were built by people arguing with each other.

Seeing them on the same day, in that order, is the most instructive half day available in Kyoto, and it costs the price of the castle ticket alone.

Opening is 09:00 all year. Closing moves three times: 17:00 from April to August, 16:30 in March and September, 16:00 from October to February. Last entry is 40 minutes before closing in every season, so a 16:00 arrival in November is too late.

The Monday closure matters because most of Kyoto's temples do not close on Mondays — the museums do, and so does this. Anyone planning a Monday around the palace and the Kyoto National Museum will find both shut. The closures page has the full weekly picture.

Gyoen is what remains of the aristocratic quarter that surrounded the court: the mansions were cleared after the capital moved, leaving gravel avenues, pine groves and around fifty thousand trees. It is free, unfenced at most hours, and used by residents as a running track and a school route rather than as an attraction.

Three things inside it are worth the detour. The Sento Imperial Palace garden, in the south-east corner, is a separate visit with its own advance application. The weeping cherries near the Konoe mansion site bloom about a week before the main Kyoto blossom, which makes them the earliest reliable blossom in the city. And the Kaninnomiya residence in the south-west is a small, free, restored aristocratic house that almost nobody enters.

The palace works best as the first half of a central day that ends at Nijo Castle, with lunch at Nishiki Market in between. All three sit on or near the Karasuma and Tozai subway lines, so the day needs no buses at all — rare in this city, and the reason it is the right plan when the roads are jammed in the blossom and autumn weeks.

What it cannot be is a Monday plan, and it cannot be a late-afternoon plan in winter, when the gate shuts at 15:20 for entry. The two-day itinerary puts it on the central morning for exactly those reasons.