Kyoto

For more than a millennium — from 794 to 1868 — Kyoto was the seat of Japan's emperors, and no other city holds the country's memory the way it does. Spared the wartime destruction that reshaped so much of Japan, it still counts some 1,600 Buddhist temples, 400 Shinto shrines and 17 UNESCO World Heritage Sites among its quiet lanes and wooded foothills. It is a city made for unhurried, self-guided exploring: switch on an audio guide, and nearly every vermilion gate, raked-gravel garden and lantern-lit alley starts telling its story at your own pace.

Begin on the eastern hills of Higashiyama, where cobbled slopes of wooden machiya townhouses climb toward the great wooden stage of Kiyomizu-dera. Below, the teahouse district of Gion stretches between the Kamo River and Yasaka Shrine — a sanctuary founded over 1,300 years ago that still hosts July's Gion Matsuri festival. At dusk on Hanamikoji Street, lanterns flicker on and you may glimpse a maiko hurrying to an evening engagement; an audio tour here explains the codes of the geiko world that a passer-by would never guess.

• Fushimi Inari Taisha — thousands of vermilion torii gates, the famous Senbon Torii, tunnel up a sacred mountainside.
• Kinkaku-ji — the Zen pavilion sheathed in gold leaf, mirrored perfectly in its pond.
• Arashiyama — a swaying bamboo grove on the city's western edge, with the gardens of Tenryu-ji beside it.
• Nijō Castle — the shoguns' 1603 residence, its sliding doors covered in gilded paintings.

Each has its own audio guide, so the history — imperial intrigue, Zen aesthetics, samurai power — unfolds as you stand in front of it.

Kyoto rewards every season: cherry blossoms in spring, fiery maples in autumn, misty temple mornings in between. Refuel at Nishiki Market, the narrow shopping street locals call "Kyoto's Kitchen," or linger over kaiseki, the refined multi-course cuisine the city perfected. Modern Kyoto — bullet trains, a celebrated dining scene — sits lightly on top of the old capital, and with a few good walks and a pair of headphones, a thousand years of Japan opens up street by street.