Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum: what you see and when to go

Inside the main building and the east building

The route starts in the east building, which sets the city in context: Hiroshima before August 1945, the rebuilding that followed, and the wider subject of nuclear weapons. A connecting corridor then takes you across to the main building, where the permanent exhibition sits. Follow that order, because the signage is built around it.

The main building is mostly objects. Belongings carried by people who were in the city that morning, clothing, everyday items, photographs taken in the days afterwards, drawings made much later by survivors. Captions are short and often written in the first person, so you end up standing close to small things and reading slowly. Plan your hour around that pace.

Leave the hour after your visit loose rather than booked. Hiroshima prefecture's tourism board allows 60 minutes inside the museum in its own one-day model course, out of roughly 220 minutes of stops for the whole Hiroshima and Miyajima day. An hour is the minimum that works here, and more is better if the rest of your day can absorb it.

Peace Memorial Museum opening hours through the year

Opening hours run wider than most schedules suggest. The museum's own site gives a 7:30am opening all year round. Closing is where the seasons show: 7:00pm from March to July and again from September to November, 8:00pm through August, and 9:00pm on 5 and 6 August, the anniversary of the bombing. From December to February the day finishes an hour earlier, at 6:00pm.

The galleries do close completely on a handful of days each year. The museum shuts on 30 and 31 December, and again for a few days in mid-February while the exhibition is changed over. Those February dates move, so confirm them on the official site if you are travelling then.

The early start is the most useful thing on this page. Walking in at 7:30am puts you through the main building ahead of the mid-morning coach arrivals and leaves the park itself for afterwards. The last hour is the other quiet stretch, and it counts in August: the city averages a daily high of 32.8C that month, with lows around 25.1C, so the ends of the day are also the comfortable ones.

Hiroshima museum admission and the reservation you may need

Admission is set by category: one for adults, a lower one for high school students, and a separate category covering junior high school students and younger. A museum ticket covers the museum. The other buildings around the park keep their own hours and their own arrangements.

One rule catches people out at the door. The museum states that entry to the permanent exhibition during the early-morning and late-evening extension windows is possible only with an online reservation. If you plan to use the 7:30am opening or the late slot in summer, sort the peace memorial museum reservation before you set out; otherwise you wait for the ordinary part of the day to begin.

Guided options take that step off your hands, because entry is arranged with the booking. On the 5-hour walking option, museum entrance is covered along with Orizuru Tower. The 8-hour bus day carries admission for the museum, Miyajima Island and Itsukushima Shrine.

How to reach the museum from Hiroshima Station

The address is 1-2 Nakajima-cho, Naka-ku, Hiroshima 730-0811. The building closes the southern end of Peace Memorial Park, with the Cenotaph and then the Atomic Bomb Dome lined up to the north, so the walk back out through the park runs in a straight line.

By tram from JR Hiroshima Station, a service signed for Eba or Miyajima reaches Genbaku Dome-mae in about 25 minutes, and from there it is roughly ten minutes on foot. Trams for Ujina put you off at Fukuro-machi, the same ten minutes away. Streetcar line 1 and bus 24 both stop at Hon-dori, about 20 minutes out from the station, leaving five minutes on foot that bring you to the museum end of the park through the arcades. No tickets are sold on board, you pay as you get off, and IC cards are touched when you board and again when you leave.

If you would rather sit, the sightseeing loop bus leaves the station's Shinkansen exit and stops at Genbaku Dome-mae and at Heiwa Koen-mae, the nearer of the two for this building; it operates every day between 9:00 and 18:00, 42 trips in all, so one comes along every 10 to 15 minutes. The National Peace Memorial Hall next door has no public parking except for visitors with physical disabilities and recommends public transport; the same applies for the museum.

Three ways to see it, side by side

Time decides this, along with whether you want English spoken out loud. A self-paced pass works if your train leaves the same day: in at the 7:30am opening with your reservation, through the permanent exhibition without long stops, and the park is still yours before lunch.

A longer visit with volunteer explanations sits at the other end of the scale. Hiroshima Peace Volunteers give guided explanations of the museum exhibits and of the monuments in and around Peace Memorial Park, which is how the park starts to read as a sequence you can follow. They are not available in July, August or September, nor on heatstroke-alert days, so the hottest months rule this one out.

The third way is a guided tour on this site, with museum entry and commentary built into the day and no timings left for you to manage. The 5-hour walking day stays in the city centre and includes the museum; the 8-hour bus day adds the ferry and Miyajima. The JPY 7127 day tour is the cheapest full day with the island, though the museum is not among its listed admissions, so take that one if the crossing and Itsukushima Shrine are what you came for.

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