Hiroshima: Best Nature Spots
Hiroshima isn’t primarily a nature destination, but between the Ōta River delta, Miyajima, and the hills inland, there’s real greenery worth building into a visit.
Miyajima’s forests and Mount Misen
Beyond the torii gate and the shrine, most of Miyajima is forested hillside, and Mount Misen, reachable by ropeway with a roughly 30-minute hike to the actual summit, gives sweeping views over the Seto Inland Sea’s scatter of islands. Sika deer wander freely through the town and the lower trails, genuinely unafraid of visitors, and autumn brings strong maple color to Momijidani Park partway up the mountain.
Shukkeien Garden
An Edo-period landscape garden a short walk from Hiroshima Castle, Shukkeien was heavily damaged in the 1945 bombing, close enough to the hypocenter that it sheltered blast victims afterward, and was carefully restored and reopened in 1951. Its ponds, small islands, and mature trees make it a genuinely calm half-hour in the middle of the city, best in cherry blossom season or autumn.
Sandankyō Gorge
A 16-kilometre ravine fed by a tributary of the Ōta River, designated a Special Place of Scenic Beauty, Sandankyō is known for its waterfalls and its autumn color, and it’s a real change of pace from anywhere in central Hiroshima if you have a spare day for it. It sits further out than most day-trip options here, so budget accordingly.
The Ōta River delta itself
Hiroshima is built across six branches of the Ōta River delta, and walking or cycling along the riverside paths downtown gives some of the best sightlines to Hiroshima Castle across the water, along with a genuinely pleasant, unhurried way to move between sights without relying on trams the whole time.
Peace Memorial Park’s green space
The park is, functionally, also a riverside green space, and it’s worth acknowledging that alongside its primary purpose as a memorial. That doesn’t make it a casual picnic spot, treat the areas around the Cenotaph and the Children’s Peace Monument with the same quiet respect you would anywhere else in the park, but the wider grounds along the Motoyasu River are genuinely pleasant to walk.
For the hiking-specific version of this list, including how the Miyajima and Sandankyō trails actually compare, see our hiking areas guide , and for the rest of what to do around these spots, our full Hiroshima guide .