Hiroshima Museum of Art

The Hiroshima Museum of Art is a gem hidden in plain sight within Central Park, a few minutes' walk from Hiroshima Castle. Founded in 1978 by the Hiroshima Bank to mark its centenary, it was created with a stated wish for peace, gathering great works of European art as a symbol of humanity's better nature in the city most associated with its worst. The result is one of the finest collections of French modern painting in provincial Japan, displayed at a human scale you rarely get in blockbuster city museums.

The collection's spine runs from Romanticism and the Barbizon School through Impressionism to the Post-Impressionists and the School of Paris. On the walls you will find Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Manet, Degas and Corot, alongside Delacroix, Millet and Courbet. The Post-Impressionist and modern rooms are the highlight, with Cezanne, Gauguin and a celebrated Van Gogh, plus works by Picasso, Matisse, Chagall, Modigliani and Utrillo. Because the galleries are compact, you can see the whole arc of nineteenth and early twentieth-century European painting in a focused, unhurried hour or so.

The building itself is part of the appeal. The main exhibition hall is a domed rotunda inspired by early Christian and Byzantine architecture, its circular plan designed so daylight and quiet lead you gently from one master to the next. A ring of surrounding galleries houses special exhibitions and a selection of modern Japanese Western-style painting, giving useful context on how Japanese artists absorbed and reinterpreted European movements.

This is an easy, restorative stop, and an ideal one on a rainy day or when you need a break from temples and crowds. There is a pleasant cafe and a well-stocked shop, and the whole museum is accessible with lifts and wheelchairs. Admission runs around 1,300 yen for adults, more during major loan exhibitions, and English labelling covers the key works.

The location makes it effortless to combine with the rest of central Hiroshima. It sits between Hiroshima Castle and the Shukkeien garden, a short walk from the Hiroshima Bus Center and the Kamiyacho tram stops, and close to the Peace Memorial Park. A sensible half-day plan is to tour the Peace Museum in the morning, then decompress here among Monet's water and Renoir's light in the afternoon before walking to the castle. Reaching the area is simple by Hiroden tram from Hiroshima Station, and IC cards work on every tram and bus in the city. For art lovers it is a quietly moving reminder of why the museum's founders believed beauty and peace belong in the same sentence.