Within the city, there are 17 specific places that have been designated as part of the official Kyoto listing on the UNESCO World Heritage List. It’s impossible to see them all in a day. I think you’d be hard pressed to see them all in three days even. If you’re the kind of person who likes to explore things in depth then you’ll need to leave yourself enough time to properly understand a city as culturally-rich as Kyoto.

I gave myself just one day in Kyoto, which I now regret. It’s easy to get templed-out in this region of Japan and I fear that was beginning to happen to me. But I still managed to see some of the most important temples and shrines… and finished the day, as the sun set, at the most beautiful of all the sights, Kiyomizu-dera.