Nara Hotel

OOn a hill at the southern edge of Nara Park, the main building designed by Kingo Tatsuno’s office has stood since 1909. It is a timber hotel that wraps a Western plan in tiled roofs and coffered ceilings, and in 2026 it was recommended for designation as an Important Cultural Property. At the top of its grand staircase, chandeliers shaped like temple lanterns are waiting.

Tiled roofs on a hill of the old capital

At the southern edge of Nara Park, on a low hill, stands a long building under layer upon layer of tiled roofs. From a distance it could be a temple hall or an old ryokan. It is the main building of the Nara Hotel, which opened in 1909.

It began with Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War. After the war, foreign travellers arrived in rapidly growing numbers, and there were not enough places for them to stay. In 1906 Nishimura Jinbei, founder of the Miyako Hotel in Kyoto, bought land on Asukayama in Takabatake, Nara — a hill running out from Mount Kasuga, with a fine view. The Railway Agency built the hotel at a cost of 350,000 yen, said to be about twice the cost of the Rokumeikan in Tokyo.

The design came from the office of Kingo Tatsuno and Yasushi Kataoka, and construction was supervised by Kozo Kawai and others. The Agency for Cultural Affairs notes that leading architects of the day were involved. The hotel opened on 17 October 1909.

Within four years, the hotel was being run directly by the Railway Agency. Known as “the state guest house of Kansai”, it served as a near-equivalent of an official guest house for state visitors and members of the imperial family. Guests were limited, as a rule, to senior officials and directors of companies above a certain size, and the hotel is said to have turned people away as “full” even with rooms to spare.

Before construction, the Nara prefectural assembly resolved that any new building “must stay in harmony with the old architecture”. A Western-style hotel for foreign guests was to stand in a town of ancient temples and shrines. Under that condition, a blend of Japanese and Western styles was chosen. Inside, a Western hotel; outside, a building of the old capital. The question this story asks is how the two were made into one building.

If you stay, before you go in, step back and look at the front of the main building. At the centre is an entrance with a carriage porch; to either side, the wings step back as they go. The roofs overlap and draw a fine, rippling line against the sky.

A Western hotel wrapped in Japanese detail

The main building is timber, with some brick. It has two storeys, partly one, and a basement, and it stretches about 141 metres from east to west. From the central entrance, the dining room and guest wings run out in a staggered line known as ganko — “flying geese” — each block set a little back from the last, like geese crossing the sky.

The roofs are tiled, in the hip-and-gable irimoya form, and the ridges carry shibi, the fin-shaped finials also seen on the great roof of the Golden Hall at Toshodaiji. The hotel speaks of its roof in the same language as the temples of Nara.

The plan, though, is unmistakably that of a Western hotel: an entrance with a carriage porch, an entrance hall with a double-height hall and grand staircase, a large dining room and a drawing room, and guest rooms on both sides of a central corridor. The Agency for Cultural Affairs calls this “a layout only a hotel would have”.

Into this, Japanese details are set. The ceilings are coffered. Curved shirin brackets run where wall meets ceiling, and the balustrades carry giboshi, the onion-shaped post caps of temple and palace railings.

The frame of a Western hotel, wrapped in the roofs and ceilings of the old capital.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs credits the building with high skill and finish in bringing Japanese and Western design together, inside and out, without strain. On 16 October 2026, the Council for Cultural Affairs recommended that the main building be designated an Important Cultural Property. According to JR West, it is the first building in Japan to be so recommended that is a hotel in its own right and still operating as one.

The timber building has been kept in use by constant care. In 1914 steam heating was installed throughout, and in 1922 new drainage and purification equipment was added for the stay of the Prince of Wales. The Great Hanshin earthquake of 1995 caused serious damage inside, but the structural frame is said to have been unaffected. A seismic retrofit followed from 2017 to 2020.

As a guest, you see this double character in your room. The central corridor that takes you there is pure hotel. But step inside and look up, and the ceiling is a coffered grid. Many rooms in the main building still have their original fireplaces. A Western mantelpiece and a Japanese ceiling share one room.

The grand staircase, the lanterns, and morning at Mikasa

Through the entrance, a grand staircase rises in the double-height hall. At the top, the chandeliers come almost to eye level. They are modelled on the hanging lanterns of Kasuga Taisha, a light that is both Japanese and Western. The hotel’s records say the chandeliers throughout were replaced with the present ones in 1922. When Audrey Hepburn visited in 1983, she is said to have kept repeating “wonderful” at the sight of them.

The ground-floor lobby, Sakura-no-ma, is where every guest seems to sit down at least once. Somewhere in the hotel is also the piano Albert Einstein played during his stay in 1922. Its legs carry the driving-wheel emblem of the Ministry of Railways, a mark from the years when the hotel was run by the state.

Meals are taken in Mikasa, the main dining room since the opening. It is the “large dining room” of the Agency’s description, and it keeps its shoin-style detailing. On the walls hang works by Yokoyama Taikan and Kawai Gyokudo, said to be original paintings that the Ministry of Railways commissioned for fans given as souvenirs to foreign guests. In the morning you can order a set built around chagayu, Nara’s rice porridge cooked in green tea. Breakfast is served from 7:00 to 10:00 am (last order 9:30).

If you stay, ask for a table away from the windows in Mikasa. The window seats on the terrace side are the popular ones, but the hotel’s own staff point to the inner tables as the place to see the room’s blend of Japanese and Western design. After a breakfast of chagayu, climb the grand staircase and look at the lantern chandeliers up close.

The main building has 62 rooms on the ground and first floors, divided between the Parkside, facing Nara Park, and the Townside, facing Naramachi. The finest, the Imperial Suite, measures 87 m², with bamboo blinds hung beneath its coffered ceiling and a carpet patterned with hosoge, the floral motif of the Shosoin treasures. To the south lies the former Daijo-in Garden, a designated Place of Scenic Beauty. It belonged to a temple founded in the Heian period, and part of the temple’s grounds is now the hotel (admission is charged).

From January 2026 the whole hotel closed for a major renovation, and in June it reopened with the main building alone — the first time in 42 years it had operated without its second wing. In September the 1984 wing reopened under a new name, the West Wing. If you are going to read the building, stay in the main building.

Kingo Tatsuno and the manners of the old capital

In our story on the Tokyo Station Hotel, we set the red-brick gateway beside the tiled roofs on the hill in Nara: one architect, changing his building to suit the city. Here we want to look at how those tiled roofs have been kept in Nara.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs places the main building in the late Meiji period, when architects were searching for styles that expressed region and national character. Trained in Western styles, they were starting to look for something Japanese, or something of a particular place. Within the assembly’s demand for “harmony with the old architecture”, Tatsuno and Kataoka gave one answer. Kataoka had studied under Tatsuno at Tokyo Imperial University, and went on to design many buildings in Osaka.

That demand went on shaping the building long after the opening. In 1966 the area was placed under protection by the Ancient Capitals Preservation Act. In 1969 a major rebuilding plan for the Osaka Expo was rejected by the scenic review council, and work began only after it was revised. The 1984 wing was built half below ground on the southern slope; today’s West Wing is described as yoshino-date, a way of building on a hillside in which floors step down the slope. On the hill, the main building’s tiled roofs have always come first.

The Marunouchi building of Tokyo Station became an Important Cultural Property in 2003. In 2026, the Nara Hotel’s main building was recommended for the same status. Both of Tatsuno’s hotels now stand in buildings protected by the nation, and both still take guests. Spend a night in the station in Tokyo and a night on the hill in Nara, and you can see how one architect thought about a building for welcoming guests, city by city.

Three things to see here

「On the hill of the old capital, a Western hotel put on a tiled roof.」

SUMIBIKI editors

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