Kobe's history runs from Yayoi bronze bells buried on Rokko to Taira no Kiyomori's 1180 capital, a treaty-port grid drawn by British engineers in 1868, and a flame burning for the 6,434 lost in 1995. Three days follow that thread west along the shore.
The Nihon Shoki dates Ikuta's founding to 201 AD, when Empress Jingū enshrined Wakahirume-no-mikoto here; the shrine's hereditary caretakers, the kanbe, gave Kobe its name. Rebuilt after 1945 firebombing and again after 1995. Open 07:00–17:00.
Housed in the 1935 Yokohama Specie Bank with its Doric colonnade, the museum holds the Sakuragaoka dōtaku bells and bronze halberds — 14 Yayoi National Treasures dug from a Rokko hillside in 1964 — plus namban screens of Portuguese traders.
Kusunoki Masashige died on this ground in 1336 fighting Ashikaga Takauji at the Battle of Minatogawa. Tokugawa Mitsukuni marked his grave with a stone in 1692, and Emperor Meiji ordered the shrine built over it in 1872.
Taira no Kiyomori moved Japan's capital to Fukuhara-kyō here in 1180 and dredged Owada-no-tomari into the harbour that became Kobe. The 1286 stone pagoda known as Kiyomori-zuka stands by the Shinkawa canal, near the 1891 Hyōgo Daibutsu.
The DRI reconstructs 05:46 on 17 January 1995, when the M7.3 Great Hanshin earthquake killed 6,434 people and burned Nagata Ward. A full-scale collapsed-street diorama, survivor testimony booths and recovery archives fill four floors.
Kobe's port opened to foreigners on 1 January 1868, and this grid of 126 numbered lots was laid out by British engineer John William Hart — the only settlement in Japan governed by its own foreign residents' council until 1899.
Traces the port from the 1868 opening: a white-rigged model of HMS Rodney, flagship of the squadron that sailed in that January, dominates the hall, with Kawasaki's shipbuilding archive and Japan's early submarine programme upstairs.
Japan's first Western-style public park, opened in 1868 for the settlement's cricket, rugby and regattas. Since 1996 it has held the 1.17 Kibō no Akari flame, lit from all 47 prefectures, above a sunken wall naming every quake victim.
Nada's soft Miyamizu water and cold Rokko winds made this district the source of roughly a third of Japan's sake. Hakutsuru, founded 1743, rebuilt its wooden Edo brewhouse after the 1995 quake flattened it; tōji tools and kimoto vats remain.
Founded in 1659, Kikumasamune still brews by the labour-heavy kimoto method abandoned by most houses. Its hall displays 45 brewing implements designated Important Tangible Folk Cultural Properties, salvaged from the collapsed 1995 warehouse.
Founded in 886 to house a Kannon image netted off Suma beach, the temple keeps Aoba-no-fue, the flute taken from 16-year-old Taira no Atsumori after Kumagai Naozane killed him at the 1184 Battle of Ichi-no-Tani, fought on these slopes.
Scottish trader A.C. Sim, who bottled Wilkinson Tansan from a Takarazuka spring, built Kobe's foreign hill colony at Shioya from the 1890s. E.W. James's 1934 Spanish-tiled mansion still stands above the sea wall, now a restaurant.