Tōfuku-ji is one of the original five great Zen temples of Kyoto, founded in 1236 and named, in deliberate ambition, by combining characters from Tōdai-ji (the great Nara temple) and Kōfuku-ji (the great Fujiwara family temple). The temple was extensively rebuilt after fires and the present main hall and sanmon — the latter, from 1425, is the oldest surviving Zen sanmon in Japan — are imposing in scale.
The reason most people come, however, is the Tsūten-kyō covered bridge, which spans a small wooded ravine on the temple grounds. In late November the entire valley fills with red maples, and the view from the bridge is one of the great compositions of the Kyoto autumn — booked out and densely crowded for about two weeks. Outside that fortnight the temple is quietly stunning and almost empty. The Hōjō rock and moss garden by Mirei Shigemori is a key twentieth-century design.