Muni Kyoto

Muni Kyoto

Muni Kyoto stands directly across the Katsura River from the Togetsukyo Bridge in Arashiyama, Ukyo Ward, on a stretch of the Saga district that Emperor Kameyama wrote of in a thirteenth century poem about the moon crossing the water. The hotel opened in August 2020, twenty-one rooms inside a low, wood-and-stone building designed by architect Koichi Yasuda of Yasuda Atelier, the same practice behind the Fukuda Art Museum next door. Both buildings belong, in different registers, to Yoshitaka Fukuda, the Kyoto-born founder of the consumer finance company Aiful, who spent fifteen years assembling the roughly two thousand pieces of Edo-to-modern Japanese painting housed in his museum, and who built the hotel as a companion to it, a place to sleep inside the same view. Interior design and art planning came from Uchida Design Inc., the Tokyo studio founded in 1970 by the late Shigeru Uchida, working in grey and cream with B&B Italia furniture and custom pieces across bedrooms, terraces and the lobby, a pairing that reads more Milan than Kyoto until you notice the underfloor radiant heating, the bath amenities made from Mizuo yuzu citron and Kitayama cedar, and the garden's engineered stream, built to echo the Katsura River running past the windows. All twenty-one rooms exceed fifty square metres, and the two-bedroom maisonette, set across the second and third floors, reaches seventy. Food comes from Alain Ducasse, who oversees two restaurants on site, MUNI ALAIN DUCASSE for dinner only and MUNI LA TERRASSE for breakfast, lunch and tea over the bridge, both led day to day by executive chef Alessandro Guardiani, who trained in Ducasse kitchens in Monaco, London and Paris. There is also MUNI LA BOUTIQUE, a small French patisserie by the entrance, and calligraphy by Soya Inada of the Bokujin-kai group above the door, spelling out muni, meaning peerless, the source of the hotel's name. What it feels like is a private villa built around a museum-grade eye, not a ryokan and not quite a European boutique hotel either, closer to staying inside somebody's very good taste. The Good Design Award it picked up in 2021 and the Michelin Key it holds feel earned, not promotional, the kind of recognition that follows restraint instead of spectacle. It suits couples and solo travellers who want Arashiyama's scenery without Arashiyama's crowds, and anyone who would choose an afternoon at the Fukuda Art Museum across the street over fighting for a spot in the bamboo grove at midday. It is not a hotel that throws a robe and a pair of slippers at the problem of luxury, but the quiet here is not accidental, it has been built into the walls. You should not come if you want a hotel with a pool, a gym worth using, or a downtown address, Muni Kyoto is twenty minutes from central Kyoto by taxi, built for stillness, not convenience. You should not come, either, if a tasting menu at nine in the evening sounds like a chore, since MUNI ALAIN DUCASSE keeps to a single seating. You should come for the view of the Togetsukyo Bridge from your own terrace, for a kaiseki dinner filtered through French technique, and for the rare sensation, in a city this visited, of having the scenery to yourself. The short version: A twenty-one room hotel on the Katsura River in Arashiyama, opened in 2020 by art collector Yoshitaka Fukuda, designed by Koichi Yasuda and Uchida Design Inc., with two Alain Ducasse restaurants and views of the Togetsukyo Bridge from every room.