Hidatakayama Town Museum — Attraction in Takayama

If you find local history and/or Japanese architecture interesting, this free, understated museum about Takayama's municipal history and its early City Hall building is well worth a visit. You can walk through the entire building, view its inner garden area, and at various points see exposed areas of the structure to learn about construction materials and methods. Don't miss the large meeting room on the second floor, accessible only by very steep stairs, and the decorative iron fence work at street level. As for local history, there are some English translations of the write ups about the exhibited documents and images, but many are not translated. I had time on my hands and found Google image translation worked...

A peaceful museum tucked away from the crowd in a traditional warehouse. It's free, and it stays open for very long (exhibition/warehouse: 09:00-19:00, garden: 07:00-21:00).

There are 14+ exhibitions related to Takayama city and Gifu prefecture on various topics, such as Takayama Festivals, warfare in Ancient Japan, Enku (the great Buddah sculpturist), paintings and even traditional firemen. Downside is that the exhibition is in Japanese only, but the exhibits alone are interesting to look at.

The warehouse itself is beautiful inside and out. I especially enjoyed looking at the...

This museum is entirely free, and somewhat hidden away. Upon entering, collecting a free map will guide you around the ~10 exhibition rooms and few small gardens. There's lots of well written information about the town's history and traditions, most of it in English.

When we visited there did not seem to be any staff around, despite the clearly well maintained grounds. Regardless of your interest in the local history, there's enough peaceful places to rest quietly to make this...