Chichu Art Museum: Naoshima Travel Guide (4.4★)

A museum you walk down into

From the road there’s almost nothing to see. Tadao Ando built Chichu, whose name means “in the earth”, mostly underground in a hillside on southern Naoshima. It opened in 2004. You see grass, a few concrete edges and a slot of sky.

Inside, the building is bare poured concrete and sharp geometric courtyards. Daylight comes from above and does all the lighting. The rooms get brighter and dimmer as clouds pass, so the art looks different at noon than it does late in the afternoon.

Three artists, three rooms

The collection is tiny on purpose. Each artist gets a space designed around their work:

• Claude Monet: five late Water Lilies paintings in a white room lit only by indirect daylight. You take your shoes off at the door and walk on small marble tiles.
• James Turrell: light works, including Open Field, where you climb steps into what feels like a solid blue-violet screen, and Open Sky, a square opening in the ceiling.
• Walter De Maria: Time/Timeless/No Time, a huge granite sphere on a stone staircase, with gilded wooden forms set around the walls.

Staff control how many people enter the Turrell and Monet rooms at once. Expect short waits at their doors, even on quiet days.

Getting there from Takamatsu

Most visitors come over from Takamatsu Port, next to JR Takamatsu Station. Shikoku Kisen runs car ferries and faster passenger boats to Miyanoura Port on Naoshima. Check the current timetable, because sailings are spaced out and missing one can cost you your ticket slot.

From Miyanoura, take the Naoshima town bus toward Tsutsuji-so. Then switch to the Benesse shuttle that runs along the south coast to the museum. Some people rent bicycles at the port instead. The road to Chichu has real hills, so an electric bike makes a big difference.

Timed tickets and other house rules

You can’t just walk up and get in. Book a time slot on the official Chichu website before your trip. The price is posted there too. Slots on weekends and holidays sell out first.

• Arrive early for your slot. You check in at the ticket centre, then walk a short path uphill to the entrance.
• No photos inside the museum. Staff will remind you. Phones go away once you pass the entrance.
• Shoes off for the Monet room. Wear shoes that are easy to slip on and off.
• Speak quietly. The concrete carries every sound, and people around you are there for the silence.
• Mondays it’s closed. Check the official calendar for extra closures around public holidays.

Beating the weekend rush

Weekends are busy all day, from 10am–4pm. In practice that’s almost the whole time the museum is open. If your schedule allows, come on a weekday, Tuesday to Friday. The Turrell queues move faster then, and you may get a few minutes alone with the Monets.

If you’re stuck with a Saturday or Sunday, book the first or last slot you can get. Spend the gap between ferries outside the busiest hours. From October to February the museum closes at 5pm (6pm from March to September), and last entry is an hour earlier.

The garden and the rest of the south coast

Chichu Garden sits by the ticket centre. Its planting is based on the flowers and trees Monet grew at Giverny, including a pond with water lilies. Walk through it before you go in. Afterwards you’ll recognise the same plants in the paintings.

The museum’s café looks out toward the Seto Inland Sea. It’s a good place to sit after the dim galleries. Two more Ando buildings are a short walk or shuttle ride away:

• Lee Ufan Museum: another half-buried Ando building, showing the Korean artist’s stones and steel plates.
• Benesse House Museum: a gallery and hotel together, with outdoor sculptures scattered along the beach.
• Yayoi Kusama’s Pumpkin: the yellow one, on a pier near Benesse House.

With good ferry connections, you can see Chichu and one of these in a single day from Takamatsu. If you want the Honmura Art House Project too, stay overnight on the island.