Japan · Tokyo Prefecture · Tokyo
Chiyoda, Tokyo — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Chiyoda is the central ward of Tokyo that wraps the Imperial Palace, Marunouchi, and the government district.
About Chiyoda
Where to stay in Chiyoda
Not every neighbourhood fits every trip — here's what each one is good for.
Chiyoda splits into distinct lodging pockets. The tower blocks of Marunouchi press against Tokyo Station on the palace's east flank, holding the ward's polished business hotels, while the government quarter of Nagatachō and Kasumigaseki keeps quieter, formal stays near the Prime Minister's Official Residence. Pick by errand.
Deal-hunters gravitate to Akihabara in the north-east, where electronics arcades and small inns crowd the rail line, and old Kanda mixes secondhand bookshops with modest beds a short walk from the palace moat.
About Chiyoda
What are the main landmarks in Chiyoda?
Chiyoda gathers an unusual weight of national institutions. The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo and the Science Museum both sit inside Kitanomaru Park on the palace's north side, while the Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum shows nineteenth-century European paintings in a red-brick block down in Marunouchi. Politics leaves its own marks.
The Prime Minister's Official Residence anchors Nagatachō, and the Yūshūkan war museum stands beside Yasukuni Shrine on the heights at Kudan.
What is the history of Chiyoda?
The ward took its present shape in 1947. Chiyoda formed around the old castle of the Tokugawa shoguns, whose keep became the Imperial Palace when the emperor moved from Kyoto and the capital shifted to Tokyo. Power never left this ground.
The Prime Minister's Official Residence and the ministries of Kasumigaseki settled beside the palace, and Yasukuni Shrine rose on the Kudan heights to enshrine the war dead.
Where is Chiyoda?
Chiyoda sits at the very centre of Tokyo, its street grid wound around the moats and green ramparts of the Imperial Palace, from the office towers of Marunouchi in the east to the wooded rise of Kitanomaru Park in the north.
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Updated July 2026