Hakone · SengokuharaNo.1187★★Open in map →

Pola Museum of Art

cultureOff the trail — and worth it

A museum in the forest above Sengokuhara, in Hakone, where almost the whole building sits below ground. The galleries hold Monet, Renoir and Cézanne, and a wooden boardwalk runs out into the beech woods around them.

FromOdawara Station
~1 hr 20 minMountain railway, then bus
Get off atPola Museum of Art bus stop (Hakone Tozan Bus, sightseeing loop)
From there
Pola Museum of Art

Directions ↗

The sweet spot

This is a well-known stop on the Hakone circuit, not a hidden one. What is easy to miss is that there is almost nothing to see from outside. The building was designed to disappear into the forest, so people arrive at the entrance expecting a museum and find a glass box. The scale only reads once you are underground.

Where it is

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What to look for — in walking order

Mori no Yuhodo forest trailKa23 13 / CC BY-SA 4.0

The glass entrance pavilionthe only part of the museum above ground, set low among the trees
The escalator downa glass-walled shaft that carries daylight with you toward the galleries
The light wall in the lobbystacked glass lit from behind, rising the full height of the atrium
The painting galleriesImpressionist and post-Impressionist rooms, then modern Japanese painting and studio glass
Mori no Yuhodo forest traila boardwalk loop of about a kilometre through beech and Japanese stewartia

How to actually get there

Odawara Station → Hakone-Yumoto Station (Hakone Tozan Line).
Hakone-Yumoto → Gora Station (Hakone Tozan Railway mountain line, switchbacks on the climb).
Gora Station → Pola Museum of Art (free museum shuttle from parking lot 4, or the sightseeing loop bus from stand 2 bound for Shisseikaen-mae).
Walk the forest boardwalk first, then go down into the galleries.

Hakone Tozan trains from Odawara, then a bus at Gora: Odawara Station →(Hakone Tozan Line)→ Hakone-Yumoto, then change to the Hakone Tozan Railway mountain line and ride it to Gora, the top of the line. At Gora, take the museum's free shuttle bus from parking lot 4 beside the station, or the Hakone Tozan sightseeing loop bus from stand 2 bound for Shisseikaen-mae. Both set down at the museum. Trains and loop buses run through the day, so no timetable planning is needed.
Back down the mountain from Gora: Take the shuttle or the loop bus back to Gora Station, ride the mountain railway down to Hakone-Yumoto and change there for Odawara. Services on a mountain line finish earlier than in central Tokyo, so check the last departures on the board at Gora before you plan a long afternoon.

Directions from my location (Google Maps) ↗

About the place

The museum stands inside Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park, on a wooded slope in the Sengokuhara district of Hakone. Park rules cap building height here, so the structure rises only eight metres above the ground. What you meet at the entrance is a low glass pavilion set among the trees. The galleries themselves occupy two floors above ground and three below, reached by an escalator that drops through a glass-walled shaft. Daylight follows you down. The design was by Nikken Sekkei, and it took both the Architectural Institute of Japan prize and a BCS award.

How to enjoy it

Walk the forest boardwalk first and take the galleries afterwards. The trail closes earlier in the afternoon than the museum, which stays open until 5pm, so that order costs nothing and makes the architecture legible — you see the trees the building was shaped around. Rain changes little here, since almost everything is below ground.

Background & history

The museum opened in September 2002. The collection was assembled privately by Suzuki Tsuneshi, second-generation head of the Pola cosmetics company, and passed to the art foundation he established. Its core is European painting from the Impressionists onward — Monet, Renoir, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Picasso — held alongside modern Japanese painting, East Asian ceramics, studio glass and historical cosmetic implements. Almost none of it had been shown in public before the Hakone building opened.

Before you go

Cash: Adult admission is 2,200 yen, 1,700 yen for university and high-school students, and free for junior-high age and under. Advance tickets sold at Hakone Tozan Railway stations cost less than buying at the door. The shuttle bus from Gora is free; the sightseeing loop bus is an ordinary fare-paying bus.
Good to know: The museum opens year-round, with occasional closures while exhibitions are changed over. The forest boardwalk shuts earlier in the day than the galleries, and can be closed outright in heavy rain or snow. Under cloud the trail goes dark well before its closing time.
Another way: From Shinjuku, the Odakyu Hakone highway bus runs to Sengokuro; from there the sightseeing loop bus reaches the museum in about three minutes.
After you get off: The loop bus stop stands at the head of the museum's approach, so there is no walk from it. The free shuttle from Gora Station sets down at the same place.