Chichu Art Museum visitor guide — everything you need to know before visiting

At a glance

Address

3449-1 Naoshima, Kagawa 761-3110, Japan

Hours

10:00–17:00, last admission 16:00

Closed

Mondays (holiday Mondays open, next day closed)

Maintenance closure

12 January – 19 March 2027

Entry

Timed, in 15-minute slots, reservation required

Night Program

Fridays and Saturdays at sunset, 30 people

Architect

Tadao Ando, opened 2004

Where the museum is

The Chichu Art Museum sits on a hill on the south side of Naoshima, a small island in the Seto Inland Sea that belongs to Kagawa Prefecture. Its address is 3449-1 Naoshima. From the slopes around it you look out over the water towards the islands to the south and west.

Almost none of it shows above ground. Tadao Ando built it into the hill in 2004 so that the coastline would keep its shape, and from the road you see a long concrete wall and a few openings rather than a building. The name says as much: chichu means “in the earth”.

How tickets work

Every visit needs a reservation for a date and an entry time. Entry runs in 15-minute slots, each with a fixed number of places, and your ticket is valid for the time you reserved. Up to eight people can book the same slot; larger groups are split into groups of eight or fewer at different times.

Tickets for each month go on sale at 10:00 Japan time on the second Friday of the month two months before. December 2026 went on sale on Friday 9 October 2026; January 2027 goes on sale on Friday 13 November 2026. When a day sells out online, the museum sells nothing at the door, and it keeps no waiting list of its own.

That is where we come in. For open dates we book your slot on the museum's official system. For dates that are sold out or not yet on sale, you can hold the date with us at no charge; we book it when it opens or when a place comes back, and only then send you a payment link.

Children and families

Children aged 15 and under enter free by day, but each child needs a reservation so the museum can count them in the slot. We add them to your booking at no charge; just tell us their ages at checkout.

Pushchairs stay at the Ticket Center or at reception, and the museum lends baby slings. There is no nursing room. There is a changing table in a restroom inside the museum and another at the Ticket Center. Some rooms ask you to take your shoes off, so easy shoes help with small children.

The museum is quiet and phones stay away, so talk with children beforehand about looking slowly. Many find it easier to notice how each room changes with the light than to read about the works. On Fridays and Saturdays, ages 6 to 15 can join the Night Program with an adult on their own fare; children aged 5 and under cannot take part.

What you see inside

Three artists have permanent rooms. Claude Monet's five late Water Lilies paintings hang in a room whose size, design and materials were chosen to unite the paintings with the space, lit by daylight. James Turrell has three works, from Afrum, Pale Blue of 1968 to Open Sky of 2004. Walter De Maria's Time/Timeless/No Time fills a whole room with a sphere 2.2 metres across and 27 gilded wooden forms.

Ando's architecture is the fourth presence. He used only concrete, steel, glass and wood, and the light falls from openings above. Because of that, the rooms change with the hour, the weather and the season, and the museum describes itself as one large site-specific work.

The Open Sky Night Program

On Fridays and Saturdays the museum runs a Night Program: a 45-minute seated viewing of James Turrell's Open Sky as the sun goes down. It takes about 80 minutes in all, including gathering at the Ticket Center and walking to and from the room. The group is 30 people at most.

The start follows sunset, so it moves through the year. In 2026 the group gathered from about 19:00 in June to about 16:35 in late November and December. The ticket includes museum entry that day; the other rooms must be seen before closing, because only Open Sky is open during the program. It runs rain or shine, and children aged 5 and under cannot take part.

Opening hours and closures

The museum opens from 10:00 to 17:00, with last admission at 16:00. It closes on Mondays; when a Monday is a national holiday it opens and closes the next day instead.

From 12 January to 19 March 2027 the museum is closed for extended maintenance. Art facilities on Naoshima can also close during typhoons or other severe weather. If the museum closes on a date we have booked for you, you get your money back in full.

Tickets for each month go on sale at 10:00 Japan time on the second Friday of the month two months before, so the maintenance months will simply not appear for sale. Dates from 20 March 2027 go on sale on Friday 8 January 2027. Hold them with us before then and we book them on release morning.

Getting to Naoshima

Ferries and high-speed boats reach Miyanoura, Naoshima's main port, from Uno in Okayama in about 20 minutes and from Takamatsu in Kagawa in about an hour by ferry. Uno port is about three minutes on foot from Uno station; Takamatsu port is about five minutes from Takamatsu station. A high-speed boat also runs from Uno to Honmura on the east side of the island.

Ferries and high-speed boats leave from different piers at Uno, Takamatsu and Miyanoura, and the timetables differ on weekdays and weekends. Check the current sailings before you travel and leave a comfortable margin before your entry time. We do not sell ferry tickets.

Read the full guide: How to get to the Chichu Art Museum: ferries, the island bus and the shuttle →

From the port to the museum

The Naoshima town bus runs from Miyanoura port through Honmura to Tsutsuji-so. From there a free shuttle bus runs to the Chichu Art Museum, stopping at the Benesse House Museum and the Lee Ufan Museum. On busy days it runs every 20 minutes. The town bus gives priority to island residents, so be patient at busy times.

The road between the East gate near Tsutsuji-so and the North gate near the Lee Ufan Museum is private, and cars and bicycles cannot use it. Bicycles can be rented in Miyanoura and Honmura and parked at the Chichu Art Museum Ticket Center; you can also walk the private stretch past outdoor artworks.

Rules on the day

Photography is allowed only up to the reception area. Past that point there are no photos, no video and no sketching, and fountain pens and ink are not allowed. Phones are not used inside, and food and drink are allowed only in the café.

Large items such as suitcases, umbrellas and tripods go in coin lockers or at the Ticket Center. Do not touch the walls, the glass or the works. Smoking is not allowed anywhere on the grounds, and pets cannot come in; assistance dogs are welcome.

Some rooms ask you to take off your shoes, so wear shoes that slip on and off easily. Visitors who appear intoxicated or likely to disturb others may be refused entry. Drones need the operator's permission in advance.

The café, the store and the garden

The Chichu Café looks out over the Inland Sea and has an open patio. It opens from 10:30 to 16:45, with last orders at 16:30, and seats 36. It sits inside the museum, so you use it after you enter at your reserved time. The Chichu Store sells the museum's own books and goods.

The Chichu Garden is planted with nearly 200 kinds of flowers and trees like those Monet grew at Giverny, from water lilies to willows and irises. The Ticket Center Shop sells drinks and some store items and is a good place to wait for the shuttle.

Accessibility

Because of the way the building is set into the hill, some areas are not wheelchair accessible. The museum lends two wheelchairs on a first-come basis and has three multi-purpose toilets. Service, guide and hearing assistance dogs are welcome.

If you or someone in your party has limited mobility, email us before you book. We will check the details for your visit with the museum, so you know what to expect before you take the ferry.

Pushchairs cannot go into the museum; they are left at the Ticket Center or at reception. The free shuttle from Tsutsuji-so stops at the Ticket Center, which saves the walk through the Benesse Art Site area.

Frequently asked questions