Naramachi is the old merchant quarter of Nara, south of Kofuku-ji, where the narrow streets and machiya townhouses of the Edo period survive largely intact. The machiya are the traditional wooden merchant houses with deep, narrow facades and long interior spaces stretching back from the street; many have been converted into cafes, craft shops, and small museums without losing their original character.
The neighbourhood is quieter than the park area and less visited by day-trip tourists. A few of the historic machiya are open as free museums showing how merchant families lived; the preserved interiors give a good sense of the spatial logic of this architecture — dark, cool, and cleverly organised to combine a shop front with a domestic interior and a workshop. The Gangoujii Garan, one of Japan's oldest Buddhist temples, sits in the heart of Naramachi.