Historic Sites, Places of Scenic Beauty, and Natural Monuments of Nara

The precincts of Hōkiji in Ikaruga, Nara, form a National Historic Site and part of the UNESCO World Heritage 'Buddhist Monuments in the Hōryū-ji Area.' Founded on the site of Prince Shōtoku's Okamoto Palace, the temple's three-story pagoda completed in 706 is Japan's oldest. Cosmos fields frame the ancient scene each autumn.

An early-Edo Place of Scenic Beauty at Nara's Hokke-ji, unfolding in three gardens. A hall and stones are said to come from the Kyoto court; iris bloom in May.

At the foot of Mount Miwa, the Makimuku Site preserves a 3rd-century building complex and 2,000 peach pits, central to the debate over Queen Himiko's Yamatai.

The Matsuyama West Gate Barrier, or Kuromon, is the sole survivor of Uda Matsuyama's castle town in Nara: a black early-1600s gate kept in its original spot.

Mii, a National Historic Site in Ikaruga, Nara, is an ancient well in the former grounds of Horinji temple, long linked by tradition to Prince Shotoku.

Discover Miyayama Kofun in Gose, Nara — a 238-meter keyhole-shaped burial mound and National Historic Site where visitors can climb the mound and view a rare nagamochi-gata stone sarcophagus still resting inside its original burial chamber.

Inside Murō-ji's grounds in Nara, a shaded ravine holds warm-climate ferns from southern Japan growing at one northern edge of their range, protected since 1928.

A 224 m early-4th-century keyhole tomb in Sakurai, Nara, Mesuriyama yielded Japan's largest haniwa and a sealed side chamber holding over 680 ritual grave goods.

Discover the nationally designated Natural Monument habitat of Loomis' Tailless Bushblue within Nara's sacred Kasugayama Primeval Forest. Designated in 1932, this site celebrates a rare cobalt-blue butterfly that once thrived in an ancient forest protected for over a thousand years as the sacred domain of Kasuga Grand Shrine — a place where Shinto spirituality, Western scientific discovery, and modern conservation intersect.