Nanzen-ji is the highest-ranked Rinzai Zen temple in Japan, founded in 1291 on the grounds of an earlier imperial retirement villa at the foot of the Higashiyama hills. The complex is unusually large for a city-centre temple, spreading across a wooded grove that climbs east toward the Philosopher's Path. The huge two-storey sanmon gate at the entrance is one of Japan's three great Zen gates; climb up for a view back over the rooftops of central Kyoto.
The grounds also contain the Suirokaku, a tall brick aqueduct on Roman lines built in 1888 to carry water from Lake Biwa over the mountains and through the temple precinct. The contrast — Zen architecture flanking a Meiji-era engineering work — is one of Kyoto's quietly characteristic juxtapositions. Smaller sub-temples scattered through the grounds (Konchi-in, Tenju-an, Nanzen-in) charge separate admissions; each has its own garden and is worth at least one detour.