Discover our newest hotels and villas in Kyoto, Japan

Visitors come to Kyoto seeking its past: the more than 1,000 temples that dot its breathtakingly beautiful surrounds, the geishas that shuffle through the Gion district on teetering okobo platforms, elaborate ceremonies in traditional tea houses. However, they find a city that’s modernising fast, with a slew of hip kaiseki restaurants, a burgeoning craft-beer and single-origin coffee scene and architecture that’s a futuristic contrast to the historic wooden buildings in the town. Escaping to its rural surrounds is richly rewarded though, with lofty bamboo forests to wander through and riotously hued foliage.