Pontocho-dori Street

Combining elegance with excitement, Pontocho-dori Street extends for about 500 m from south of Sanjo-dori Street down to Shijo-dori Street, and has become Kyoto’s preeminent cultural and pleasure district.
The road is lined on both sides with traditional two-storied buildings, each about three bays (approx. 5.5 m) wide. The space created by the continuous eaves, the front doors designed to blend with the streetscape, and the sense of delicate scale make Pontocho distinctive.
It is also one of Kyoto’s most famous hanamachi, or geisha districts, and has been since the Edo period. The bamboo screens, wooden slats for blocking the view, fine lattices, curved bamboo base fences, and low wooden fences are design details that give a sense of hidden depth to the teahouses and other buildings that maintain the traditions of the hanamachi in this historical streetscape.
On the north side stands the Kaburenjo Theatre, a key element of the area’s look and culture, with its Chinese-style glazed roof tiles, peony-and-arabesque patterned terracotta tiles, and other decorations that give the building an East Asian air.
Pontocho’s delicate sense of scale, and the kawayuka elevated open-air dining platforms—symbols of summer in the city—facing the Kamo River and Higashiyama, make it famous as a street offering one of the most Kyoto-like townscapes there is.
Kyoto City