History
Kyōto Station opened on 5 February 1877 as the eastward extension of the Kobe-Osaka railway, just months before the Satsuma Rebellion turned it briefly into a military transport hub. The line was extended to Ōtsu in 1880 via a route south through what is today the Nara Line. The Nara Railway joined in 1895 and the Kyoto Railway, predecessor of the San'in Main Line, in 1897. The Tōkaidō realignment of 1 August 1921 through the new Higashiyama and Shin-Ōsakayama tunnels brought the through-traffic pattern still in use today, and in 1928 the Kintetsu Kyoto Line opened along the old Nara Line right of way. The Shinkansen platforms, opened over Hachijō-dōri in 1964, were placed alongside the existing station after a 1960 decision. The fourth-generation 15-storey station building designed by Hiroshi Hara opened in 1997.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
The 1997 station building, with its enormous glass-and-steel atrium, won an honourable mention at the Brunel Awards for railway architecture.