Opened in 1915, Osaka Tennoji Zoo is a long-standing urban zoo set within Tennoji Park. Its exhibits introduce animals and habitats in the middle of a dense city, linking recreation with a century of changing ideas about wildlife care.
Guide preview
A zoo in the middle of Osaka can make the city feel unexpectedly close to the natural world. Tennoji Zoo opened in 1915 and has spent more than a century changing alongside ideas about animal care, public education, and how habitats should be represented.
Continue exploring
Discover the full story
Keep reading with a travel pass and explore every full guide and tour.
UpgradeQuick facts
- The zoo opened in 1915.
- Its grounds cover approximately 11 hectares.
- Osaka’s tourism authority reports a collection of about 1,000 animals and 170 species.
More places in Osaka
Abeno Harukas
Abeno Harukas rises above Tennoji as a 300-meter mixed-use tower, with shops, offices, a hotel, an art museum, and an observatory. Its name carries a hopeful sense of clearing or brightening, fitting a building designed as a city landmark.
America-mura
America-mura grew from shops selling imported Western clothing into one of Osaka’s best-known youth-culture districts. Triangle Park anchors streets of fashion, music and cafés, where global influences are continually reworked locally.
Cupnoodles Museum Osaka Ikeda
Ikeda is where Momofuku Ando developed Chicken Ramen in a backyard shed in 1958. The Cupnoodles Museum turns that small-scale experiment into a story about food design, showing how an everyday convenience product began with practical invention.
Daisen Kofun (Nintoku Tomb)
Daisen Kofun is an immense keyhole-shaped burial mound in Sakai, surrounded by a triple moat and dense greenery. The site is traditionally identified as Emperor Nintoku’s mausoleum, though the wooded mound itself is not open for entry.
Dotonbori
Dotonbori’s bright signs and busy canal edge grew from an older entertainment district. The neighborhood’s name recalls the man who financed the canal excavation, while theaters and teahouses helped establish the food-and-performance culture that still shapes its streets.
Expo '70 Commemorative Park
Expo ’70 Commemorative Park preserves the site of the 1970 World Exposition, a vast gathering organized around “Progress and Harmony for Mankind.” Today, lawns, gardens, museums, and the Tower of the Sun make the former fairground a public park.