Aman Kyoto

Aman Kyoto stands on a museum that was never built. The garden belonged to one of Japan's most respected collectors of obi, the sashes worn with a kimono, and the plan was a textile museum on a series of platforms in this wooded valley at the foot of Mount Hidari-Daimonji. Since 2019 the platforms have carried Kerry Hill's pavilions instead, dark timber and glass to the floor, among Kitayama cedars and Japanese maples in 80 acres of forest. Moss-covered stone paths climb between them, and streams spill over ledges green with fern. In the rooms it is pale wood and tatami, a deep tub of hinoki cypress in each, and the forest close enough to fill the glass.

Recommended for couples who want Kyoto's temples by day and a forest to come back to, and for families content to swap a pool and a kids' club, neither of which it has, for a two-bedroom pavilion and a babysitter booked three days ahead. Ask for the Takagamine Pavilion, which looks over the whole garden to Mount Hiei. Kinkaku-ji, the Golden Pavilion, is fifteen minutes away on foot and Ryoan-ji's dry garden half an hour, two of the city's great sights in a morning's walk; Gion is half an hour by car. The onsen, indoors and out, draws on a spring beneath the grounds. It opens at seven, by booking, and guests write of having it to themselves at sunrise, which is a fair argument for an alarm. Evenings start with a complimentary aperitif at the Living Pavilion and end with omakase or kaiseki at Taka-An, dedicated to Hon'ami Kōetsu, who helped shape Takagamine's creative life four centuries before anyone planned a museum here.