Marufukuro

Housed in Nintendo’s very first headquarters now reimagined by the most celebrated architect in Kansai, Marufukuro is made up of three original 1930s Art Deco buildings and Tadao Ando’s all-glass and concrete addition. It’s part museum, part period property and part luxury hotel.

Crucially, Marufukuro wears these roles lightly, refusing to let any one identity compete with the others. It offers the same attentiveness, the same unhurried pace, the same sense that the property is working on your behalf as a luxury hotel, but is playful and engaging where you might expect it to be reverential.

There’s no front desk – staff work from an open-plan area in a nod to the building’s office origins. The bars are self-service, the art interactive, and some bathrooms even play Grieg’s Morning Mood when you take a seat. 

The result is a stay in a register that is entirely its own. Marufukuro is possibly the most singular place you can bunk at in all of Kyoto.

What are the rooms like at Marufukuro?

The hotel has 18 individually designed rooms, including four suites.

In the original building’s rooms, mid-century hardwood furniture fills spaces where old and new are genuinely hard to tell apart. There are large windows to flood the rooms with light while smaller Art Deco stained-glass windows soften and colour the spaces; original William Morris wallpaper hides inside some of the wardrobes.

The Ando-designed rooms offer something different: poured concrete walls warmed by timber accents, floor-to-ceiling glass that frames views of the city or internal courtyards, and a minimalist calm that makes the rooms feel surprisingly homely despite being fashioned almost entirely from glass and concrete.

Beyond the guest rooms, the communal spaces reward time spent in them, too. The guest and dining lounges offer around-the-clock spots to decompress and enjoy complimentary drinks and nibbles, while the dNa Library offers a quietly curated history of the three threads the hotel is built from: Kyoto, Nintendo and Tadao Ando.

In fitting Nintendo fashion, all these spaces are full of playful easter eggs and invitations to interact with the buildings and their history. The four buildings are named after playing cards which Nintendo first became famous for; there’s the original office timestamp guests can still use; and the library’s rare company artefacts and design and history books are all there to be plucked from their shelves and taken to one of the low-slung couches.

On arrival, staff take guests on a full tour of the site – knowledgeable and leisurely, it sets the tone for the unhurried but informed pace that defines the stay. What follows are generous proportions, big beds, deep couches and a noon check-out. The message from the hotel here is clear: don’t rush, Marufukuro would rather you stayed a little longer.

What’s good to eat and drink nearby?

At Tempura Marufuku, the in-house restaurant, the 10-course seasonal menu at ¥20,000 per person is as much an experience as a meal. Sourced entirely from Kyoto’s farms and built around the season, it moves deliberately slowly, with staff on hand to explain each dish as it arrives fresh from the open kitchen.

Breakfast is also included, and with Tempura Marufuku on site there is little reason to leave other than for lunch if that’s how you’re feeling. That said, the hotel’s neighbourhood holds its own when it comes to places for food and drink and is well worth the excursion.

[Ki:] serves refined Lebanese plates in a converted machiya townhouse, is a short walk away and a near-perfect lunch. Kaikado, the renowned tea caddy maker, has a café around the corner in a sympathetically renovated old post office and does good coffee and small bites, which can be enjoyed in a lovely walled outdoor space thick with greenery.

For something more casual, Gojo Mall is a trendy cultural complex as well as a standing bar for a drink and a bite. Rock Stock, tucked into the owner’s garage, is a haven for music and motorcycles and is the neighbourhood’s late-night option. Rokken is the kind of reliable local izakaya every area needs. And Kyoto Beer Lab, a small, relaxed brewpub, is famous for its innovative brews in a green, open space.

What about the gym at Marufukuro?

There’s no gym at the hotel itself, but guests have free entry to one nearby. There are also electric bikes that are free to hotel guests and perfect for turning your journey to see the sights, or out for dinner, into an activity in and of itself.

What’s the area like around Marufukuro?

The hotel is between the Kamo and much smaller Takase River, in a neighbourhood that can feel a world away from Kyoto’s main tourist trail despite being minutes from it. The narrow streets around Marufukuro are quiet and largely made up of original and renovated machiya which help continue the relaxed feel from the hotel out through the door.

For local things to do, there’s Ume-yu, a charmingly renovated neighbourhood sento (bathhouse) run by Yutonami – a company dedicated to preserving traditional public bathhouses across Kansai – which is free for hotel guests and open from 6am to 2am. Ume-yu is a local bathhouse turned trendy, so it’s not the biggest nor fanciest you will ever go to, but it is a lively space and still manages to pack in multiple baths as well as a cold plunge and a sauna.

There’s also Nami Yoga Studio close by – a bilingual yoga studio in a tastefully renovated office space that bridges stripped-out minimalism with soft, sliding shoji screens and warm wooden floors. It offers a mix of powerful and relaxing yoga classes, and always tea after class.

Why you should book a stay at Marufukuro

Since opening in 2022, the hotel has been steadily gaining recognition as one of Kyoto’s finest stays. In 2025 it took three prizes at the World Luxury Hotel Awards – Best Luxury Hotel, Best Architectural Design and Best Luxury Boutique Hotel – and 2026 brought a Japan Travel Awards finalist nomination.

The accolades make sense. Marufukuro fills a gap in Kyoto’s hotel landscape. It’s not a traditional ryokan nor a bells-and-whistles luxury stay, but it takes the best parts of both while doing something entirely different: preserving and presenting local histories in a way you can really engage with. That also means it rewards a different kind of visit: one where you stay in the hotel, explore the immediate neighbourhood, and don’t treat the property as somewhere to sleep between dawn-to-dusk sightseeing marathons.

So, if you’re lucky enough to visit Kyoto with time to spare – time to stay in rather than sightsee, to eat a long dinner and read in a room that feels genuinely worth being in – Marufukuro is the hotel you’re looking for. The staff are exceptional. The food is exceptional. The building is exceptional. And none of it requires any performance around the experience of being there.

Address: 342 Kagiyacho, Kamogawa-nishi-iru, Shomen-dori, Shimogyo, Kyoto. 600-8126

Price per night: From ¥54,000

Closest transport link: Shichijo Station, Keihan Main Line. A 5-minute bus ride away from Kyoto Station. 

Hotel website: https://marufukuro.com/en/