Naramachi

What to know

Naramachi (奈良町, literally "Nara Town") is the former merchant district of Nara, where several traditional residential buildings and warehouses are preserved and open to the public. Boutiques, shops, cafes, restaurants and a few museums now line the district's narrow lanes.

Many of Naramachi's buildings from the Edo Period and earlier were machiya, long, narrow "townhouses" that served both as shops and as the living quarters of local merchants. The store fronts of machiya were often kept narrow to save on taxes, which used to be calculated on a property's street frontage rather than its total area. Today, a handful of machiya have been preserved and opened to the public as museums.

Before its development into a merchant district around the 15th century, the area that is Naramachi today was occupied almost entirely by the once-spacious grounds of Gangoji Temple. Gangoji was one of Japan's most important temples during the Nara Period and has been registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Though once a sprawling complex, today only a couple of temple buildings remain.

Below is a list of Naramachi's main attractions:

Naramachi is located about a 10-15 minute walk south of Kintetsu Nara Station. From JR Nara Station, it is about a 20 minute walk to the southeast. Nara's loop buses number 1 and 2 serve Kintetsu Nara Station and JR Nara Station and run along the southern border of Naramachi.