Nara is where the Japan we know begins. Before Kyoto, before Tokyo, the country's first stable capital was here, more than thirteen hundred years ago, and in that brief but intense 8th century the foundations of Japanese writing, art, religion and even identity were laid. The result is a small, peaceful city that holds some of Japan's oldest and grandest treasures: enormous wooden temples, the oldest wooden building on the planet and a colossal bronze Buddha that takes your breath away.
But if anything makes Nara unforgettable, it's the deer. More than a thousand sika deer roam freely through the city's great park, among the temples and the tourists, and they have even learned to bow to ask for the crackers sold for them. Considered for centuries sacred messengers of the gods, today they are Nara's most loved and most fun sight: watching them calmly cross in front of an ancient temple, with the forest behind, is one of those images that stays with you.
This guide explores Nara with a practical, warm eye: which temples are truly worth it, how to treat the deer (they are wild animals, not pets), how to plan your walk through the park, where to eat and how to make the most of the day if you're coming from Kyoto or Osaka. Nara is best enjoyed slowly, walking among centuries-old trees and stone lanterns, in the place where Japanese civilisation was born.
Nara was Japan's first permanent capital. In 710, Empress Genmei moved the court there and founded Heijo-kyo, a city laid out on a grid in imitation of the Chinese capital Chang'an. During the so-called Nara period (710-784), the city was the centre of a state that eagerly adopted the culture, writing and Buddhism of the mainland: Japan's first chronicles (the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki) were compiled, monumental temples were built and Buddhism became the state religion. Emperor Shomu ordered the construction of Todai-ji and the casting inside it of the Great Buddha (Daibutsu), a colossal bronze statue completed in 752, a symbol of the country's spiritual and political power. However, the growing power of the Buddhist monasteries over the court led to the capital being moved, first to Nagaoka and then to Kyoto in 794. Nara was left on the sidelines of power, which, paradoxically, helped it preserve its extraordinary legacy. Today, eight of its monuments are World Heritage Sites. The full story, from Heijo-kyo to today, is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The historical cradle of Japan: Nara and Kyoto, the first two imperial capitals, plus mercantile Osaka, Himeji Castle and the sacred Mount Koya.
Read the history of Kansai (Kyoto, Osaka and Nara) →A local guide tells you in half an hour what no sign at the site will ever explain. We look ours up on Civitatis: guided in Spanish and booked online with no fuss. There are not many in Nara, but the ones there are worth it. And there are free tours here: you book without paying and tip the guide whatever you think at the end, so trying one costs you nothing. Tap the cards below and have a look.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
In 710, Empress Genmei made a founding decision: for the first time, Japan would have a fixed capital. Until then, each new sovereign usually moved the court somewhere else, partly because of Shinto beliefs about the impurity of death. Genmei broke with that custom and founded Heijo-kyo, the city we now know as Nara, on a fertile plain in the Yamato valley, the mythical heart of the Japanese state. This was the birth of the country's first permanent capital, and with it the Nara period (710-784), one of the most decisive eras in Japanese history.
Heijo-kyo was laid out to a strict plan, modelled on the dazzling Chinese capital of Chang'an, then the largest city in the world: a perfect grid of wide avenues aligned to the cardinal points, with the imperial palace to the north and a great central avenue linking it to the south gate. It came to have around 100,000 inhabitants, a huge figure for the time. Everything about the city spoke of the ambition of a young state that wanted to stand alongside the great civilisations of the mainland.
It was a century of intense adoption of Chinese and Korean culture: writing, the system of law and centralised government (the ritsuryo system), the arts, medicine and currency. Nara saw the compilation of the two works that set down Japan's founding myths and history, the Kojiki (712) and the Nihon Shoki (720), and it was a time when poetry flourished —with the great anthology known as the Man'yoshu— alongside Buddhist sculpture of a quality that still astonishes today. Nara was, in short, the crucible in which Japanese civilisation was forged.
The event that defined 8th-century Nara was Buddhism becoming the state religion, and the building of its crowning monument: the Great Buddha of Todai-ji. These were turbulent times, marked by devastating epidemics —a major smallpox epidemic around 735-737 may have killed a quarter of the population— and by rebellions. Emperor Shomu, a devout Buddhist, believed that the Buddha's protection could bring peace and stability to the realm, and he decided to undertake a colossal project as an act of both faith and power.
In 743 he issued an edict to cast a great bronze statue of the Vairocana Buddha, the cosmic Buddha. It was a project on a national scale: hundreds of thousands of people are thought to have taken part, and it used up an enormous share of the bronze available in the country. The statue, almost 15 metres tall, was completed and consecrated in a solemn ceremony in 752, attended by dignitaries from all over Asia; the monk who 'opened the eyes' of the Buddha by painting in its pupils was Indian, a sign of how cosmopolitan that court was. To house it, the Daibutsuden was built, one of the largest wooden buildings in the world.
That effort cut both ways. Buddhism gave Nara magnificent temples, sublime art and international prestige, but it also made the monasteries and the clergy enormously powerful, and they began to meddle in the affairs of the court. One famous episode involved the monk Dokyo, who built up so much power at the empress's side that he came close to seizing the throne. That growing clerical power would, in fact, be what brought Nara's time as capital to an end.
In 784, just 74 years after it was founded, the court abandoned Nara. Emperor Kanmu moved the capital first to Nagaoka-kyo and then, in 794, to Heian-kyo, present-day Kyoto, which would remain the imperial seat for more than a thousand years. The reasons for the move included the wish to escape the stifling power of Nara's Buddhist monasteries, geographical and strategic considerations, and perhaps the desire to start afresh somewhere 'pure'. For Nara, losing its status as capital was a blow from which, in terms of power, the city would never recover.
But, as would happen centuries later with Kyoto, that relative decline had an unexpected and fortunate consequence: set apart from the centre of power and the great upheavals, Nara preserved its ancient heritage far better than if it had kept growing and renewing itself. Its great temples —Todai-ji, Kofuku-ji, Kasuga shrine— remained active as religious centres, sustained by their prestige and their pilgrims, even as the city shrank.
Not everything survived intact. Over the centuries, wars and fires badly damaged the monuments: during the Genpei War, in 1180, the Taira clan set fire to Nara and destroyed much of Todai-ji and Kofuku-ji, including the Great Buddha, which had to be recast and repaired. The Great Buddha Hall burned again in the 16th century and was rebuilt in the early 18th century in the version we see today, somewhat smaller than the original. Even so, from one rebuilding to the next, Nara has managed to hand down to us a collection of 8th-century treasures unmatched in East Asia.
No history of Nara is complete without its deer, which are not a modern tourist add-on but have been part of the city's sacred soul for more than twelve hundred years. The legend goes back to the founding of Kasuga shrine in 768: it is said that one of the shrine's guardian gods, Takemikazuchi, came to Nara from a distant province riding a white deer. From then on, the deer living in the area were regarded as messengers of the gods, sacred animals that it was strictly forbidden to harm or kill.
For centuries, that ban was enforced with extreme severity: killing a Nara deer could be punishable by death. There are tales, more or less legendary, of exemplary punishments, and an old local custom held that residents got up early to make sure there was no dead deer outside their door, because they could be blamed for it. That almost religious protection allowed the deer population to survive and thrive right in the middle of a city, something almost unheard of anywhere in the world.
Today, Nara's more than twelve hundred sika deer are protected as a 'national natural treasure' of Japan. They are no longer considered literally divine, but they remain the city's best-loved symbol and live alongside residents and millions of visitors with astonishing ease: they cross streets, lie down in the shade of the temples and have learned to bow to ask for crackers. That scene —a deer strolling calmly past a temple thirteen hundred years old— sums up better than anything the blend of history, spirituality and charm that makes Nara unique.
Today's Nara is a quiet city of around 350,000 people that lives, to a large extent, from and for its extraordinary heritage. In 1998, eight of its monuments —the temples of Todai-ji, Kofuku-ji, Yakushi-ji and Toshodai-ji, Kasuga shrine, the Kasugayama primeval forest, Heijo Palace and the associated shrine and temple— were jointly inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List under the name 'Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara'. To these can be added nearby Horyu-ji, home to the oldest wooden buildings in the world, inscribed separately in 1993.
Unlike its big neighbours Kyoto and Osaka, Nara has managed to keep a human scale and an unhurried pace that are part of its charm. The city welcomes millions of visitors every year, most of them on day trips from Kyoto or Osaka, drawn by the unique combination of ancient art, spirituality and the endearing presence of the deer. Neighbourhoods such as Naramachi keep the atmosphere of the old merchant town, with wooden houses turned into cafés and workshops.
Visiting Nara is, at heart, a return to the source. This is where the first stable capital was founded, where Buddhism became the state religion, where the first chronicles were written and the country's largest Buddha was cast, and where much of what it means to be Japanese took shape. Walking among its ancient temples, with a deer crossing your path and the sacred forest in the background, is a glimpse into the roots of one of the world's great civilisations. Nara doesn't impress with its size or its bustle, but with something deeper: the feeling of standing in the place where it all began.
