Audio tours
in Kyoto

Audio tours in Kyoto

History

Kyoto: The Samurai and the Japan That Almost Vanished

Kyoto was Japan's imperial capital for a thousand years, the stage of samurai betrayals, assassinations and wars. In 1945 it topped the atomic bomb target list, and a single man took it off. Twelve stops through the bamb

🎧 23 min 12 stops 🚶 8 km ESENPT +2

Gion: the Closed World of the Geisha That Survived the Twentieth Century

Geisha are neither courtesans nor actresses: they are artists who spend years on dance, music and conversation, and in Kyoto little more than two hundred remain. This walk follows their world from the river where kabuki

🎧 21 min 12 stops 🚶 4.19 km ESENJA +3

Kyoto Zen: Fifteen Stones No One Can See at Once

A rectangle of raked gravel with fifteen stones, designed some five hundred years ago by someone whose name no one knows, became one of the most contemplated objects in Japanese art and an obsession for Western musicians

🎧 20 min 12 stops 🚶 23.87 km ESENJA +3

History

Honno-ji: the Dawn They Betrayed the Man Who Was About to Unify Japan

In June 1582 Oda Nobunaga, the warlord who had ended a century of chaos, slept in a Kyoto temple with barely a hundred men. Before dawn one of his generals surrounded him with thirteen thousand soldiers. Twelve stops fol

🎧 20 min 12 stops 🚶 49.06 km ESENJA +3

Suggested plan for Kyoto

Doing every Trevurs tour in Kyoto takes about 23 h 15 min in total. A relaxed way to split it:

No fixed schedule: start whenever you want, skip stops, or spread a tour over several days.

Kyoto on a budget

The Trevurs app is free and has 4 audio tours in Kyoto: 1 h 24 min of narration across 48 stops and 85.1 km of walking routes. Download them over wifi and listen offline, with no mobile data. Entry tickets to museums, churches or monuments along the way are not included. Premium, from USD 1.99, adds unlimited offline downloads, every tour and no ads.

How to travel on a budget with Trevurs →

Kyoto at your own pace

Each tour starts at stop 1 and you go stop by stop at your own pace: pause, rewind or skip any stop. No booking and no fixed start time, and it works offline once downloaded. 2 routes are longer than 12 km: split them over several days or use public transport between some stops.

• Kyoto: The Samurai and the Japan That Almost Vanished
  Starts at stop 1, “A Temple for a Ghost” (map) · 23 min of audio · 8 km (~2 h on foot) · ~2 h 30 min in total
• Gion: the Closed World of the Geisha That Survived the Twentieth Century
  Starts at stop 1, “A Woman on the Riverbank” (map) · 21 min of audio · 4.2 km (~1 h 5 min on foot) · ~1 h 30 min in total
• Kyoto Zen: Fifteen Stones No One Can See at Once
  Starts at stop 1, “The Tiger Crossing the Water” (map) · 20 min of audio · 23.9 km (~6 h on foot) · ~6 h 30 min in total
• Honno-ji: the Dawn They Betrayed the Man Who Was About to Unify Japan
  Starts at stop 1, “The Enemy Is at Honno-ji” (map) · 20 min of audio · 49.1 km (~12 h 15 min on foot) · ~12 h 45 min in total

In one day you can do Kyoto: The Samurai and the Japan That Almost Vanished (~2 h 30 min) and Gion: the Closed World of the Geisha That Survived the Twentieth Century (~1 h 30 min): about 4 h of touring with audio and walking. Doing all 4 tours takes about 3 days at a relaxed pace, as in the suggested plan on this page.

Exploring at your own pace, and when a guide is better →

Why an audio tour

• ✓ No group to keep up with and no guide to wait for
• ✓ Start at any time of day, on your own schedule
• ✓ Go at your own pace: pause, rewind or skip any stop
• ✓ No need to commit 2 or 3 hours to a single tour: do one stop or the whole route
• ✓ Works offline once downloaded

Trevurs is a free app for iOS and Android. There is also an optional Premium version, from USD 1.99, with unlimited offline downloads, access to every tour and no ads. It also helps keep an independent app alive.

How it works

Questions about audio tours in Kyoto

More audio tours in Japan

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