Hiroshima-shi Travel Guide

Peace Memorial Park lies in Naka Ward, Hiroshima, built to commemorate the victims of the atomic bombing and to pray for world peace. Created in the 1950s, the park holds the A-Bomb Dome, the Cenotaph for the A-bomb Victims, the Children's Peace Monument and the Peace Bell, along with a museum that systematically presents records of the bombing. The clear Ota River runs through the grounds, where weeping willows stand beside the monuments. Both an important witness to history and a place to reflect on war and wish for peace, it draws many visitors and school groups each year.

The Hiroshima Peace Memorial (Genbaku Dome), formerly the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, was among the few structures left standing after the 1945 atomic bombing, preserved as it was torn by the blast. Inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996, it is kept permanently as a symbol of peace and anti-war aspiration. On the Motoyasu River, it joins the Peace Memorial Park across the water—the memorial cenotaph and Peace Flame—as Hiroshima's core site. Visit in a solemn spirit, reflecting on the cost of war and the value of peace; it is a quiet, profound lesson in history.

Hiroshima Castle is a quaint, solemn rebuilt castle in Hiroshima, with a black keep and moat, rebuilt after the war - carrying history and rebirth. In central Hiroshima, also called the Carp Castle. Its core is the black wooden keep, solemn and elegant. The original was destroyed in the 1945 atomic bombing; the present keep was rebuilt after the war - a museum inside, climb for city views. Around it, a wide moat, stone walls and a castle park.

Shukkeien is a pretty, elegant Japanese garden in Hiroshima, a classic garden condensing mountains and water - picturesque in four seasons. In central Hiroshima, a historic daimyo garden. Its name means shrink-scenery; centered on a pond, with islands, hills, streams, pines, a tea house. Four-season beauty; autumn maple best. (Damaged in the bombing, later restored.)

Orizuru Tower stands directly across Aioi-dori from the Atomic Bomb Dome. Built in 2016 under Hiroshima Mazda, it reworked an older building into a place to look at the city's present, past and future rather than a simple viewing platform. The ground-floor product hall and Akushu Cafe are free to enter. On the twelfth floor, Orizuru Hiroba lets you fold a crane from a sheet of special paper and drop it through a glass floor into the fifty-metre Orizuru Wall, a glass column visible from the street below and slowly filled with cranes left by visitors from around the world; each sheet costs JPY 100 and is the tower's most concrete statement about peace. Above it, the rooftop 'Hiroshima no Oka' has no glass at all, only fine mesh, so the wind moves across a gently sloped wooden deck with loaned cushions, facing the Dome and Peace Memorial Park and, on clear days, Mt. Misen on Miyajima. Along the east side runs 'Sanpo', a spiral ramp from street level to the roof, with the seventy-metre 'Kurukuru Cool' slide hidden down its middle; borrow a slide sheet, helmet and knee pads and ride free, as often as you like, which for many children means a dozen times. At JPY 2,200 for adults it is not cheap, but a hand stamp allows same-day re-entry: see the Dome in clear morning light, spend midday in the park, and come back for sunset, which is the best use of the ticket.

Fudoin is a Shingon branch temple (Shin'nichizan Ankoku-mitsuji) at the foot of Mt. Futaba in Ushita, eastern Hiroshima. Some 3.9 km from the hypocenter, it miraculously survived the atomic blast and holds the city's only National Treasure: the golden hall, first built in 1540 in Yamaguchi by the Ouchi clan and moved here by restorer Ankokuji Ekei — the largest surviving medieval karayo (Zen-style) building in Japan. Its Yakushi Nyorai image, bell tower and main gate are all Important Cultural Properties, making the temple a precious vault of culture in the bombed city.