Explore Tokyo

Meiji Jingu is a Shinto shrine dedicated to the deified spirits of Emperor Meiji and Empress Shōken, dedicated in 1920 and rebuilt in 1958 after the 1945 air raids destroyed it. It stands in a 70-hectare forest of trees donated from all over Japan, beside Yoyogi Park; wooden torii mark the gravel paths to the main hall.

Yasukuni Shrine is a Shinto shrine in Chiyoda, founded in 1869, that commemorates about 2.5 million people who died in Japan's service, from the Boshin War to the Second World War. Among them are 1,068 convicted war criminals, 14 of them Class A, which makes the shrine politically contested; the Yūshūkan war museum stands on its grounds.

The Tokyo Imperial Palace is the residence of the Emperor of Japan, laid out on the site of Edo Castle in Chiyoda. The palace buildings are seen only on guided tours, but the East Gardens show the stone base of the castle keep, the Ninomaru garden and old guardhouses, and the outer gardens look across the moat to the stone bridges and the Fushimi turret.

The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, opened in 1952 as Japan's first national art museum and stands in Kitanomaru Park beside the moats of the Imperial Palace. Its collection covers Japanese art from the Meiji period to the present, with Nihonga and Western-style painting, prints and sculpture, alongside some Western works.

The National Museum of Western Art in Ueno Park opened in 1959 around the collection of the industrialist Kōjirō Matsukata. Its main building, designed by Le Corbusier, is part of the UNESCO World Heritage listing of his architectural work, and the galleries show European painting and sculpture from the 14th to the early 20th century.

The National Museum of Nature and Science, founded in 1877, stands in the north-east corner of Ueno Park in Tokyo. The Japan Gallery, in a 1931 building, covers the islands' nature and history, and the Global Gallery covers life on Earth and the history of science and technology, with dinosaur skeletons, the preserved dog Hachikō and a life-size blue whale model outside.

The Tokyo National Museum in Ueno Park, founded in 1872, is the oldest national museum in Japan. It holds about 120,000 objects, among them 89 National Treasures, shown in rotating displays across several buildings: the Honkan for Japanese art, the Tōyōkan for Asian art and the Gallery of Hōryū-ji Treasures.

Sensō-ji is the oldest-established Buddhist temple in Tokyo, dedicated to the bodhisattva Kannon; tradition dates it to 628, when two fishermen found a Kannon statue in the Sumida River. Visitors pass the Kaminarimon gate and the Nakamise shopping street to the Hōzōmon gate, the five-storey pagoda and the main hall, rebuilt in 1958 after the 1945 air raids.

teamLab Planets Tokyo is a digital art museum in Toyosu created by the art collective teamLab with DMM.com and opened in 2018. Visitors walk barefoot through large immersive installations, some of them in water, and through garden and forest areas; the venue is scheduled to run until the end of 2027.

A museum of miniature models in the Ariake district of Kōtō, opened in June 2020 inside a logistics centre building and covering about 7,000 square metres. Its rooms hold detailed dioramas such as a space centre with rocket launches, Kansai International Airport with moving aircraft, a global village, a Shibuya street scene and sets from the anime Evangelion.

The Ghibli Museum, in Inokashira Park in Mitaka on the western edge of Tokyo, is devoted to the work of the animation studio Studio Ghibli. Designed by Hayao Miyazaki and opened in 2001, it has rooms on how animated films are made, a small cinema showing short films made only for the museum, a rooftop garden and a café. Entry is by advance reservation only.