Where to stay in Kyoto

Downtown is the grid between Shijō and Oike, from Karasuma east to the Kamo: the Nishiki food market behind Shijō, the covered arcades of Teramachi and Shinkyōgoku, and the restaurant lanes of Pontochō and Kiyamachi along the river. It is the one part of Kyoto that is awake in the evening, the one with a full choice of places to eat, and the point the city's train and bus lines pass through or end at. What you give up is the atmosphere people come to Kyoto for: this is a working commercial centre, and the temples and wooden streets are ten minutes east rather than outside your door.

The slope between the Kamo and the hills, from Yasaka Shrine and Maruyama Park south through Kōdai-ji and the lanes climbing to Kiyomizu-dera. This is the Kyoto of the photographs, and one of the few places where the photographs are honest: the streets really are wooden and staying here means walking out into them before the buses arrive. Two things temper it. It is the most crowded ground in the city between mid-morning and late afternoon, and it is the most expensive. The private lanes of Gion Kōbu are a working district where photography is restricted and residents are not an attraction.

The blocks around the station itself, north into Shimogyō and south into Minami. It is the least atmospheric answer to the question and, for a certain trip, the right one: the city's buses start here, the Shinkansen stops here, the airport express leaves from here, and Nara and Osaka are close on ordinary trains. It also holds Kyoto's largest hotels, which means lifts, luggage rooms and space to open a suitcase — none of it guaranteed in the machiya districts. Higashi and Nishi Hongan-ji are a short walk north, and almost nobody staying here walks to them.

The quiet centre. Kyoto Gyoen, the walled park around the Imperial Palace, is the green heart of the city and open to walk through; west of it, Nishijin is the weaving district, a grid of low machiya where the looms still run and the street life is entirely local. It is ten minutes from Downtown by subway and feels a world away from it. Nothing here is a headline sight, which is the point: this is where you stay on a second visit, or on a first one if what you want from Kyoto is to live in it for a week rather than photograph it in three days.

The north-eastern edge, from Nanzen-ji and the Okazaki museum quarter up along the Philosopher's Path to Ginkaku-ji. Leafy, slow, and built around a canal walk rather than a shopping street. The sights are first-rank and, unusually for Kyoto, they are strung along a route rather than scattered, so a day here is a walk instead of a series of bus rides. The weakness is getting anywhere else: the subway reaches the southern end and the northern end is buses, which in this city means standing.

The far west, where the Katsura comes out of the hills at the Togetsukyō bridge: the bamboo grove, Tenryū-ji and its garden, the river. It is the one area on this list that is a destination in its own right rather than a part of the city, and that cuts both ways. By day it is as crowded as anywhere in Japan; by evening the day-trippers are gone and the riverside is close to empty, which is a genuinely different experience of Kyoto and the reason people stay. The cost is distance: everything else is a train ride, the last ones are not late, and dinner is limited to what is open near the bridge.

The south: Fushimi Inari's tunnel of gates on the hillside, and four kilometres down the valley the sake district around Chūshojima, where the breweries and their canal are. Well connected — JR and Keihan both run through, Kyoto Station is minutes away and Osaka is close — and the cheapest ground on this list by a distance. It is also the one area of the seven that is not a neighbourhood: Inari and the sake district are two separate places with a residential stretch between them, and a hotel “in Fushimi” may be beside the shrine gates or beside a brewery. Read the address, not the area name.