Where to stay in Kyoto: the best neighbourhoods and hotels

This is the Kyoto you came for. Gion is the city's most famous geisha district, a grid of dark wooden townhouses and discreet teahouses, and behind it the lanes climb through Higashiyama to Yasaka Shrine, Kodaiji and the great wooden stage of Kiyomizu Temple. Go early or late: by mid-morning the slopes are shoulder to shoulder, and at dusk they are yours.

Hotels here are small, pricey and worth it. One sits on a hill beside Kiyomizu Temple with its own bamboo grove and natural hot springs; another hides in a traditional building in Gion itself; a third has just 48 individually designed rooms in Higashiyama Ward. Light sleepers will love it. Anyone who wants bars after ten should look across the river.

Downtown Kyoto is where the city eats, shops and goes out. Nishiki Market, five blocks of tofu doughnuts, grilled eel and things on sticks, runs through the middle; covered arcades and department stores line Shijo and Kawaramachi; and the narrow alley of Pontocho, beside the Kamo River, glows with restaurant lanterns after dark.

It is the most practical base in town. Two subway lines cross at Karasuma Oike, Gion is a short walk over the bridge, and you are never more than a few minutes from dinner. Stay in a design hotel a few minutes from the Manga Museum and Nishiki Market, a new arrival with a rooftop bar looking to the Higashiyama mountains, or one of Japan's best-loved traditional inns, run by the same family for generations.

Nobody falls in love with the streets around Kyoto Station, but plenty of people are glad they stayed. The vast glass station is the hub for the bullet train, the lines to Nara and Osaka and most of the city's buses, with Kyoto Tower across the road and the five-storey pagoda of Toji Temple a short hop south.

Hotels run from good-value chains to a smart five-star built into the station itself, a minute from the platforms. Others are two to eight minutes' walk from the gates, and Fushimi Inari's tunnels of red gates are under ten minutes away by car or a couple of stops by train. Pick it for a short stay, an early departure or a holiday built around day trips.

North-west of downtown the city calms down. Nijo Castle, with its moats and squeaking nightingale floors, anchors one end of the district; the walled park of the Imperial Palace fills the other. Between them lie residential streets of craft shops, galleries and old townhouses, a subway ride of about ten minutes from Kyoto Station.

Some of Kyoto's most polished hotels have settled here, with hot-spring baths, spa menus and gardens that make the castle feel like a neighbour rather than a sight. There are quieter picks too: a small hotel of 25 rooms looking on to its own garden, and a calm, good-value address right beside the palace park.

Follow the eastern hills south from Kiyomizu and the tour groups thin out. Around Shichijo you'll find Sanjusangendo, a long wooden hall lined with 1,001 golden statues, the Kyoto National Museum, and a clutch of temples most visitors never reach. Kyoto Station is close, and the Keihan line runs straight up to Gion and down to Fushimi Inari.

It has quietly become the city's luxury corner. International five-stars here come with indoor pools, serious spas and gardens, and a calm business-class hotel sits five minutes' walk from Keihan Shichijo Station. A good compromise if you want temple-district atmosphere and an easy run to the trains.

Okazaki is Kyoto's museum quarter, laid out around the enormous vermilion gate of Heian Shrine and a canal lined with cherry trees. Walk east and you reach the great wooden gate of Nanzenji, its brick aqueduct, and the Philosopher's Path winding north towards the Silver Pavilion.

Evenings are hushed, which is the appeal. Stay in a traditional inn near Nanzenji with a garden to gaze at over dinner, a small luxury hideaway in Okazaki, or a grand hillside hotel with hot springs, an indoor pool and a free shuttle around the neighbourhood. Downtown is a short subway ride away when you want noise.

Arashiyama, on Kyoto's western edge, is all river and forest: the Togetsukyo Bridge, the bamboo grove, Tenryuji's pond garden and wooded hills that blaze red in November. By day it is packed. Stay the night and you get it at dawn, which is another thing entirely.

The hills to the north have the same away-from-it-all feel. One resort sits in the foothills of the Takagamine mountains in deliberate seclusion; another, in Sakyo Ward, is a short drive from the Imperial Palace and Heian Shrine. You trade convenience for calm out here, so it suits a second visit, or the last two nights of a first.

Kyoto is a prefecture as well as a city, and it reaches all the way to the Sea of Japan. Up on that coast, Miyazu Bay is crossed by Amanohashidate, a slender sandbar thick with pines that has been counted among Japan's three most scenic views for centuries. The name means something like bridge to heaven.

It is a place for hot-spring baths and seafood dinners rather than sightseeing checklists. Hotels are built around the view: one on a hill where every room looks over the sandbar, another with a footbath deck and more than a dozen spa facilities, and a bayside resort and spa. Come for a night or two after the city.