Capella Kyoto Opens in the Miyagawa-cho Geiko District

Capella Kyoto opened on 22 March 2026 in Miyagawa-cho, one of Kyoto’s five geiko districts, a few steps from Kennin-ji, the city’s oldest Zen temple, and from the Kamo River. It is the first hotel in Japan for the Singapore-based Capella group, whose Bangkok property is among the highest-ranked hotels in the world.

The hotel stands on the site of the former Shinmichi Elementary School and was designed by Kengo Kuma & Associates as a reinterpretation of the machiya, the timber townhouses of old Kyoto, with low roofs and wooden screens that keep to the scale of the neighbourhood. The interiors are by Brewin Design Office of Singapore. There are 89 rooms and suites. Some look over the rooftops of the district, others face the adjoining theatre, and six Onsen Suites have a private bath fed by hot spring water. The Capella Suite, on the top floor, measures 206 square metres.

The project is tied to the life of the district in an unusual way. It includes the restored Miyagawa-cho Kaburenjo, the theatre where the local geiko and maiko give their annual dance performances, so that the hotel and a working institution of the neighbourhood share one block.

The dining is led by a partnership with SingleThread, the three-Michelin-starred restaurant and farm in Sonoma, California, whose founders have long drawn on Japanese cooking. SoNoMa by SingleThread has a 12-seat counter and a bar under chef Keita Tominaga, and the same team directs the hotel’s patisserie. Yoi offers late-night kappo cooking and cocktails, and Lanterne is an all-day French brasserie. The Auriga Spa has three private onsen rooms, saunas and four treatment rooms.

The opening comes in the same month as the Imperial Hotel, Kyoto, in neighbouring Gion, and continues a run of arrivals that began with Aman and Park Hyatt in 2019 and went on with Six Senses in 2024. Few of them are as closely woven into a historic quarter as this one.