Hiroshima sits on the delta of the Ōta River, where six channels fan out into the Seto Inland Sea. Founded as a castle town in 1589, it is now the largest city in Japan's Chūgoku region, home to around 1.2 million people, and it carries its history in a way few places do: at 8:15 on the morning of 6 August 1945 it became the first city ever struck by an atomic bomb. Everything you see today was rebuilt on that ground — and yet Hiroshima is not a sombre city. Its wide boulevards are lined with cafés, streetcars rattle past the river promenades, oysters sizzle on the grill, and the whole town turns red on Carp game nights.
It is also a city best understood by listening. The monuments of the Peace Park rarely explain themselves, the castle is a post-war reconstruction with a story hidden behind its timber, and the shrine on Miyajima has stood in the sea for centuries for reasons that are easy to miss at a glance. Each landmark here has its own audio guide, so you can walk from the river to the island and hear the story unfold in front of the real thing.
Start at the Atomic Bomb Dome
Begin on the bank of the Motoyasu River at the Atomic Bomb Dome, the skeletal shell of the old Industrial Promotion Hall that stood almost directly beneath the blast. It was left as it was and has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1996. A short walk away, a plain plaque marks the hypocenter itself, and the T-shaped Aioi Bridge — the bomber's aiming point — still spans the river. The audio guide to the Dome tells you what the building was before, why it survived, and why the city argued for decades about whether to keep it.
Through the Peace Memorial Park
Across the river, the Peace Memorial Park is a green triangle laid out by Kenzō Tange on what was once Hiroshima's busiest neighbourhood. Its axis runs from the Cenotaph, whose arch frames the Dome, past the Flame of Peace, to the Peace Memorial Museum, the most demanding and most necessary museum in Japan. Around the edges are quieter monuments: the Children's Peace Monument hung with a million paper cranes, the memorial mound holding unclaimed ashes, and the National Peace Memorial Hall where survivors' testimonies are recorded. Pace yourself here; the audio guides let you take the park one monument at a time.
Hiroshima Castle and the Shukkeien Garden
North of the park, Hiroshima Castle is the reason the city exists: the warlord Mōri Terumoto built it on the delta in 1589, and the town grew up around its moats. The original keep was destroyed in 1945 and rebuilt in 1958; inside is a museum of samurai life, and the moat walk is one of the loveliest strolls in the centre. A few blocks east, the Shukkeien Garden is a miniature landscape of ponds, bridges and tea houses first laid out in 1620, where a handful of trees that survived the bombing still stand. Nearby, the Hiroshima Museum of Art keeps a small but fine collection of French Impressionists.
Miyajima and the floating torii
Hiroshima's other World Heritage Site lies half an hour away. Take the JR line to Miyajimaguchi and a ten-minute ferry to Itsukushima Island — Miyajima, the "shrine island" — where tame deer meet you at the pier. Itsukushima Jinja was rebuilt in its present form by Taira no Kiyomori in 1168 as a shrine on stilts over the water, and its vermilion Otorii, the great gate standing in the bay, seems to float at high tide and can be walked to at low tide. Behind the shrine, the Daishoin temple climbs the hillside, the five-storied pagoda and Senjokaku pavilion crown the hill above the harbour, and the Miyajima Ropeway carries you most of the way up Mount Misen for a view across the Inland Sea. The audio guides here untangle the shrine's Heian-era story and the reasons an island was once too sacred to be born or buried on.
Okonomiyaki, oysters and the streetcar city
Back in the city, eat as the locals do. Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki — layered, not mixed, with a nest of noodles — is the civic dish, and Okonomimura stacks two dozen griddle counters into one building just off the covered Hondori Shopping Street. Oysters from the Inland Sea are grilled at huts along the shore in winter, and the Saijo Sake Brewery Street is an easy train ride east. The Orizuru Tower beside the Dome has a rooftop terrace for a last look over the park at sunset.
Beyond the city
With a day to spare, ride out to Kure, whose Yamato Museum tells the story of the giant battleship built in its shipyards, or west to Iwakuni, where the five-arched Kintaikyo Bridge steps across the Nishiki River beneath a hilltop castle. Every place on the map has its own audio guide, so you can string them together at your own pace.
Getting around
Hiroshima runs more streetcars than any other city in Japan — service famously resumed three days after the bombing — and the tram from Hiroshima Station reaches the Peace Park, the castle and the ferry to Miyajima. A one-day tram-and-ferry pass covers most of what is described here; the Shinkansen puts Osaka about ninety minutes away.