Sapporo Art Park
Former stone quarry reshaped into a hillside sculpture garden with paths threading past dozens of open-air artworks.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Sapporo Art Park starts with quarrymen cutting pale volcanic Sapporo nanseki stone from this hillside as early as eighteen seventy-two, stone that once held up the young city's warehouses and chimneys until concrete made it obsolete. You'll hear how the abandoned pit sat scarred and overgrown for decades, until a group of Hokkaido sculptors calling themselves CINQ looked at it in the early nineteen eighties and saw a shape to build around rather than a wound to fill in. Look for the old chisel marks still visible in the cut stone underfoot and along the retaining walls as you walk the paths among the sculptures.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Ishiyama Green Space
Sunken stone amphitheater and sculpture park carved into the raw walls of a century-old quarry.
Moerenuma Park
Reclaimed landfill reborn as a single sprawling sculpture designed by artist Isamu Noguchi.
Sapporo Shiryokan (Former Sapporo Court of Appeal)
Renaissance-style courthouse of hand-carved volcanic soft stone, its old criminal courtroom preserved inside.
Maruyama
Round-topped hill above the city, its regrown old-growth forest long mislabeled untouched wilderness.
Takino Suzuran Hillside Park
Sprawling hillside park of flower fields, waterfalls and forest trails on former pioneer farmland.
Maruyama Primeval Forest
Old-growth hillside forest laced with a switchback trail lined by eighty-eight small Kannon statues.