10 Best Things to Do in Hiroshima

The building was the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, completed in 1915 to a design by the Czech architect Jan Letzel. The bomb detonated almost directly overhead at roughly 600 metres, and because the blast came from above rather than the side, the vertical walls and the steel frame of the dome survived while everything around collapsed. It has been listed as the Hiroshima Peace Memorial UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1996.

The city debated demolishing it for two decades. A campaign led in part by the diary of a girl who died of leukaemia caused by radiation exposure secured its preservation in 1966, and the ruin has since been stabilised three times without being restored. You cannot enter, and the site is viewed from a path around the perimeter. Information boards in English explain the structure and the decision to keep it.

The museum opened in 1955 and reopened in 2019 after a full redesign that moved the personal accounts to the front of the visit. The Main Building now leads with belongings recovered from the dead: a child's tricycle, a school uniform, a watch stopped at 8:15. The scientific and political material on the development and use of the weapon follows in the East Building.

Admission is JPY 200 for adults, deliberately kept low, and audio guides are available in several languages. Allow two hours. The museum is direct about what happened and does not soften the photographic material, and staff are used to visitors needing to sit down partway through. The upper floor holds a quiet space and a view over the park axis to the dome.

Itsukushima Shrine was founded in 593 and rebuilt in its current form in 1168 by Taira no Kiyomori. The whole complex is built on piers over a tidal flat because the island itself was considered sacred ground that commoners could not set foot on. At high tide the corridors appear to float; at low tide you can walk out across the sand to the base of the torii.

The vermilion Great Torii stands 16 metres tall and is not fixed to the seabed. It holds position by its own weight, with stones packed into the box-shaped crossbeam. The current gate is the eighth, dating from 1875, and completed a major restoration in 2022. Shrine entry is JPY 300, and the island also carries Senjokaku hall, a five-storey pagoda and free-roaming deer.

Mount Misen rises 535 metres above the shrine and is the reason to give Miyajima a full day rather than three hours. The summit looks north across the Seto Inland Sea and its scattered islands, and on a clear day the view runs as far as the mountains behind Hiroshima. Primeval forest covers the upper slopes and has never been logged.

The Miyajima Ropeway climbs most of the way for around JPY 2,000 return, leaving a 20-minute uphill walk to the true summit. Three hiking routes run from the base instead, taking 90 minutes to two hours. Near the top, Reikado Hall keeps a flame said to have burned since Kobo Daishi lit it in 806, and it was used to light the Flame of Peace in the memorial park.

Mori Terumoto built Hiroshima Castle in 1589 on the river delta, and the city grew up around it. The five-storey keep survived until 1945, when it was destroyed by the bomb. The current structure is a 1958 concrete reconstruction of the exterior, housing a museum of Hiroshima's history as a castle town rather than a restored interior.

The grounds are more rewarding than the keep. The moat, stone walls and reconstructed Ninomaru gate complex are free to walk, and a eucalyptus and a willow inside the grounds survived the blast and are marked as A-bombed trees. Admission to the keep is JPY 370 and the top floor gives a clear view over the city towards the mountains.

Shukkei-en was laid out in 1620 for Asano Nagaakira, the feudal lord of the domain, and the name translates roughly as shrunken-scenery garden. It compresses valleys, mountains and forests into a circuit around a central pond, with a rainbow-arched bridge at its middle and tea houses at intervals along the path. The whole loop takes about 40 minutes at a slow walk.

The garden sits 1.3 km from the hypocentre and was destroyed in 1945, then used as a refuge by survivors, many of whom died there. Several trees survived and still grow, marked with plaques. Restoration work began in the late 1940s and the garden reopened to the public in 1951. Admission is JPY 260, and koi and turtles fill the pond in numbers.

Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki is layered rather than mixed, which is the argument the city has with Osaka. A thin crepe goes down first, then a mound of shredded cabbage, bean sprouts, pork belly, a nest of fried yakisoba or udon noodles, and an egg on top, finished with a sweet-savoury sauce. It is assembled in front of you on a hot plate and eaten with a metal spatula.

Okonomimura stacks around 24 small independent stalls across four floors of one building in Shintenchi, each with its own griddle counter and its own regulars. The format dates to post-war street carts that were gathered into a permanent building in 1992. Expect to pay JPY 900 to 1,400 and to sit at the counter rather than a table.

Orizuru Tower opened in 2016 in a converted office block next to the Atomic Bomb Dome. Its open-air top floor, the Hiroshima Hills observation deck, gives the only elevated view over the entire Peace Memorial Park, with the dome directly below and the mountains behind the city. On clear days Miyajima is visible to the southwest.

The building takes its name from the paper crane, orizuru. Visitors fold one at the top and drop it into a glass-walled shaft that runs the full height of the building, slowly filling as a public artwork. Admission is around JPY 2,200. A spiral wooden ramp, rather than a lift, takes you back down the outside of the structure.

Mazda has been headquartered in Hiroshima since 1920 and the company played a substantial part in the city's recovery, sheltering local government offices in its buildings after 1945. The museum covers that history alongside the engineering the firm is known for, in particular the Wankel rotary engine that Mazda took into mass production when other manufacturers abandoned it.

The tour ends on a walkway above a working section of the Ujina assembly line, with finished cars moving below. Historic vehicles on display run from the 1931 three-wheeled truck through the Cosmo Sport to Le Mans-winning racers. Entry is free but strictly by advance reservation, and English-language slots are limited and go weeks ahead.