The Peace Memorial Park,
laid out.
One triangle of land between two rivers holds the Cenotaph, the Children's Peace Monument, the Flame of Peace, the A-Bomb Dome, the Memorial Hall and the museum. Everything outdoors is free and never closes. This page is the map, the tram stop and the time budget.
The park is free, open at every hour, and takes about an hour to walk properly without going inside anything. Add the Peace Memorial Museum (¥200, about $1.30) and the National Peace Memorial Hall (free) and you are looking at half a day, not the two hours most itineraries give it. Take Hiroden line 2 or 6 to Genbaku Dome-mae, roughly 15 minutes from Hiroshima Station at the flat ¥240 fare.
What the park actually is
Start hereA triangle of reclaimed ground at the fork of the Motoyasu and Honkawa rivers — the old Nakajima district, the busiest commercial quarter in the city until 8:15 on 6 August 1945. It was not turned into a park because it was empty. It was emptied.
The hypocentre sits a few hundred metres east of the park, over the Shima Hospital site, not under the Dome. The Dome survived because the blast came almost straight down on it. Everything else in the triangle came later: Kenzo Tange won the 1949 design competition and laid the whole site out on a single north–south axis, so that standing at the Cenotaph you look through its arch, past the Flame of Peace, straight at the Dome. That sightline is the one thing to notice before anything else.
Hiroshima is a comfortable, well-run, entirely ordinary mid-size Japanese city. The bomb took the old fabric and the rebuild was practical rather than picturesque. Come for the Peace Park, the island and the food — not for the streetscapes. The mistake almost everyone makes is giving the important part four hours and the ordinary part none.
Practically, the park is small. The full outdoor circuit is about 1.2km of flat paved walking and roughly an hour at a normal pace, including standing still. The buildings are what take the time: 90 minutes to two hours inside the museum, 45 minutes in the National Peace Memorial Hall, 30 minutes in the free G7 Summit Memorial Museum, and an hour if you sit in on the 13:00 English testimony talk.
The G7 building is the one nobody tells you about. It opened on 19 May 2024, it is free, and it holds the actual round table and chairs the leaders sat at during the 2023 summit, along with a logo object made from atomic-bombed trees and replica guest books. The summit is why it exists: all seven leaders visited the Peace Memorial Museum together, signed the guest book and laid flowers — the first time sitting leaders of every G7 nation, the United States included, had done so.
Every stop in the park, in walking order
The circuitNorth to south, starting at the Dome and finishing at the museum — the direction the axis was designed to be read in.
| Stop | Cost | Time | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| A-Bomb Dome | Free, 24h | 10 min | The 1915 Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, left as it stood. Exterior only — nobody goes inside. Floodlit after dark and better then. |
| Rest House | Free | 15 min | The 1929 kimono shop that became a fuel-rationing office. Its basement survived with one man in it, and the basement is now open to view. There is also a tourist-information desk and clean toilets — the only ones in the north half of the park. |
| Children's Peace Monument | Free, 24h | 10 min | Sadako Sasaki on top, 1958. The glass booths around it hold folded cranes from all over the world; anyone may add their own, no paperwork, booths open 08:45–17:00. |
| Flame of Peace | Free, 24h | 5 min | Lit in 1964 and burning continuously since. It is intended to go out when the last nuclear weapon on earth does. |
| Memorial Cenotaph | Free, 24h | 10 min | Tange's saddle arch over the register of the dead. The inscription has no grammatical subject and that is deliberately argued about. |
| National Peace Memorial Hall | Free | 45 min | Underground, spiral-ramped, almost silent. Testimony video in 20+ languages and free memoir readings in English twice a month. |
| G7 Hiroshima Summit Memorial Museum | Free | 30 min | Opened 19 May 2024 and almost nobody lists it. The actual round table and chairs the G7 leaders used in 2023, a logo object made from atomic-bombed trees, and replica guest books. Same seasonal hours as the Peace Memorial Museum. |
| Peace Memorial Museum | ¥200 / ~$1.30 | 2–3 hrs | The reason the half-day exists. Open from 7:30 year-round — not 8:30, whatever you have read — and almost nobody uses that hour. |
Prices and hours checked 4 August 2026. Dollar prices convert at ¥157.7 = $1, the rate on 4 August 2026. Treat every $ figure as a snapshot and the ¥ figure as the real price.
The practical bit
Plan your visitThere is no code of conduct, and that is the point
The one ruleThe whole park is non-smoking and that is the only hard posted rule. There is no published dress code, no ban on eating, no enforced silence and no photography restriction — inside the museum or out. What governs the park is a norm rather than a regulation, and it is worth knowing the difference before you arrive: what people actually do here is a much stronger constraint than anything a sign tells you.
That extends to the harder questions. Nobody will stop you photographing anything. Nobody checks whether you went in the museum. Nobody requires you to look solemn. We have written the uncomfortable version of all of it, including the survey where 70% of fifty people asked at the Dome said flashing a peace sign there made them uncomfortable.
Everything in and around the park
The clusterPeace Memorial Park — the questions people ask
FAQPage schema pairedHow long do you need in Peace Memorial Park?
About one hour for the outdoor circuit — roughly 1.2km of flat walking with time to stand at the Cenotaph and the Children's Peace Monument. Add the museum and you need a minimum of two hours more, three if you read the captions. Park plus museum plus the National Peace Memorial Hall is a half day, not the two hours most itineraries allow.
How do you get to Peace Memorial Park from Hiroshima Station?
Hiroden streetcar line 2 or 6 to Genbaku Dome-mae, about 15 minutes, flat ¥240 (about $1.50). The Maple-loop tourist bus is the other option — its colour-coded routes were consolidated into one unified route on 18 July 2026, it runs 09:00–18:00 every 10 to 15 minutes at ¥240 a ride, and it is free with a JR Pass. Note it no longer stops at Kamiyachō or Hatchōbori. Hiroden went to a flat ¥240 adult / ¥120 child fare on 1 February 2025, its first revision in seven years, replacing the old distance-based ¥140–270 scale. The all-day streetcar pass is ¥700, so it pays from your third ride — which is exactly what a Peace Park, castle and station day comes to.
Is Peace Memorial Park free?
Yes. The park, the Memorial Cenotaph, the Children's Peace Monument, the Flame of Peace and the A-Bomb Dome are all free and open 24 hours. So are the National Peace Memorial Hall and the G7 Hiroshima Summit Memorial Museum. The only admission charge in the whole park is the Peace Memorial Museum at ¥200 for an adult, ¥100 for high-school students and over-65s, and nothing at all for junior-high and under.
What is the G7 Hiroshima Summit Memorial Museum?
A free museum inside Peace Memorial Park that opened on 19 May 2024 and appears on almost no English itinerary. It holds the actual round table and chairs the G7 leaders used at the 2023 summit, a logo object made from atomic-bombed trees, and replica guest books. It keeps the same seasonal hours as the Peace Memorial Museum — 7:30–20:00 in August, to 21:00 on 5 and 6 August — and closes 30–31 December. Thirty minutes, no ticket.
Can you visit Peace Memorial Park at night?
Yes — it is unfenced and unstaffed, and the A-Bomb Dome is floodlit, which is when it reads best. The paths through the park itself are only partly lit, and the crane booths at the Children's Peace Monument are curtained after 17:00 to protect the paper from vandalism. Allow 30 minutes for a night walk between the Dome and the Cenotaph.
Are there rules for visiting the Peace Memorial Park?
One: the entire park is non-smoking. There is no published code of conduct beyond that — no dress code, no eating ban, no photography restriction, and no enforced silence. The real constraints here are social rather than posted, which is why we wrote a whole page on the difference.
What is the best time of day to walk the park?
Before 09:00 or after 17:00. The 11:00–14:00 block is when coach groups and school trips overlap, and in FY2025 the museum recorded 2,580,926 admissions — a third consecutive record — with entry temporarily suspended at times for safety. The park itself never actually closes, so the early hour costs you nothing.
Can you do the park and skip the museum?
Yes, and nobody is checking. An hour outdoors covering the Dome, the Children's Peace Monument, the Flame and the Cenotaph is a coherent visit on its own, and it is the right call with young children or on a tight connection. We don't put a verdict badge on the Peace Memorial Museum, the Park, the Dome or the Cenotaph. They aren't purchases to be assessed, and ¥200 against 140,000 dead isn't a value calculation. Where a guided tour of them is worth the money we say so about the tour, not about the place.
Booking and getting there
PracticalNothing in the park needs to be booked and nothing outdoors costs money. These are guided walks of the park, for people who want the context spoken rather than read — and a hotel search for the surrounding ward.