Nara was Japan's first permanent capital. Founded in 710 as Heijō-kyō, it ruled the country for 74 years until the court fled to Nagaoka and then Kyoto in 784, partly to escape the political grip of its own monasteries. Those monasteries stayed behind, and that is the point of Nara today: the temples, shrines and treasure houses of the eighth century are still standing, still in use, and gathered so tightly around one enormous park that you can walk between them in an afternoon with an audio guide in your ears telling you what each one meant.
The park is the other reason people come. More than a thousand sika deer roam Nara Park, protected as a natural monument and, in local belief, messengers of the gods; they bow for shika senbei crackers and follow you up the temple approaches. Around them sit two gardens, Isuien and Yoshikien, and the bald grass dome of Mount Wakakusa, whose summit gives the classic view over the roofs of the old capital. Nara is under an hour by train from both Kyoto and Osaka, but the day-trippers leave by late afternoon, and the city that remains is quiet, low and very old.
Start at Tōdai-ji and the Great Buddha
Everything in Nara leads to Tōdai-ji. You enter through the Nandaimon Gate, flanked by two fierce Niō guardian kings that are national treasures in their own right, and then the Daibutsuden fills the view: the Great Buddha Hall, rebuilt in 1692 at only two-thirds of its original width and for centuries the largest wooden building in the world. Inside sits a 15-metre bronze Vairocana Buddha whose open hand alone is the height of a person. The audio guide for the hall explains why an eighth-century emperor bankrupted a nation to cast it, and how the building burned and rose twice.
Climb the lantern-lined steps east of the hall to Nigatsudō, the February Hall, which is free, open at all hours and stages the fire-and-water Omizutori rites every March; its balcony is the best sunset spot in the city. Next door, the Hokkedō (Sangatsudō) is the oldest surviving structure in the complex, its dim interior ringed by clay guardian statues.
Kasuga Taisha and the lantern-lined forest
Follow the deer south-east through the woods and the path fills with mossy stone lanterns: some three thousand of them, donated over the centuries, leading to Kasuga Taisha. The vermilion shrine was founded with the capital as the tutelary shrine of the Fujiwara clan, the family that ran Japan for most of the Nara and Heian periods, and hundreds of bronze lanterns hang from its eaves. They are lit only twice a year, at the Mantōrō festivals in early February and mid-August. Behind the shrine rises the Mt. Kasuga Primeval Forest, an old-growth sacred wood closed to logging for over a thousand years, and beside it the Manyo Botanical Gardens grow the roughly 250 plants named in the Man'yōshū, Japan's oldest poetry anthology, with wisteria in late April.
Kōfuku-ji, Sarusawa Pond and the museums
At the park's western edge, the Five Storied Pagoda of Kōfuku-ji is the postcard of Nara, doubled in the water of Sarusawa Pond below. Kōfuku-ji was the Fujiwara family temple, and its National Treasure Museum holds the six-armed Ashura statue that is arguably the most loved sculpture in Japan. A few minutes away, the Nara National Museum is the place to understand Buddhist art before or after seeing it in situ; every autumn it exhibits the Shōsōin imperial treasures for a few weeks only.
Naramachi, the old merchant quarter
South of Sarusawa Pond the lanes narrow into Naramachi, the former merchant town that grew up on the grounds of Gangō-ji. Latticed wooden machiya houses line the streets, some now cafés, sake shops and craft studios; Naramachi Koshi-no-Ie is one you can walk through for free, to see how a long, thin townhouse was lived in. At the edge of the district, the pounders at Nakatanidou hammer out fresh mugwort mochi at speed for a crowd, which is as good a snack as Nara offers.
Hōryū-ji and the Nishinokyō temples
Twelve kilometres south-west of the centre, Hōryū-ji was founded in 607 by Prince Shōtoku, the statesman who made Buddhism a state religion. Its western precinct holds the oldest surviving wooden buildings on earth, a gate, a main hall and a five-storey pagoda that have stood since the Asuka period, and it was among Japan's very first UNESCO World Heritage listings in 1993. The octagonal Yumedono, the Dream Hall, is the heart of the eastern precinct. On the way back, the Nishinokyō stop gives you two more of Nara's great temples side by side: Toshodai-ji, founded in 759 by the blind Chinese monk Ganjin after five failed crossings to Japan, and Yakushi-ji, with its twin pagodas.
Beyond the park: Heijō Palace, Yoshino and Asuka
The capital itself is now a field. The Heijō Palace Site Historical Park on the city's west side reconstructs the Suzakumon Gate and the great audience hall on the grid where the eighth-century court once stood, with an audio guide filling in the vanished city around them. Further out, a Kintetsu train reaches Mount Yoshino, the most famous cherry-blossom mountain in Japan, and the Asuka valley, cradle of the Japanese state, where the Ishibutai Mounded Tomb stands as a bare megalithic chamber in the rice fields.
Getting around
Kintetsu Nara Station puts you five minutes from the park; JR Nara is a twenty-minute walk or a short bus. Nearly everything in the park area is walkable, so the practical plan is to let the audio guides pace you from temple to temple, then use trains for Hōryū-ji, Nishinokyō, Yoshino and Asuka.