Ubud Guided Walking Tour: Historic Landmarks & Palace Access

★★★★★★★★★★ 4.98 (119 reviews) 98% rated it 5 stars

Free cancellationTravelers' pick

1/5

Duration3h

GroupUp to 8

LanguagesEN

Mobile ticketAccepted

Learn Ubud's history at four landmarks most visitors miss the context for

A guided walking tour of Ubud covering Ubud Palace, Puri Lukisan Museum, Campuhan Ridge Walk and the Prince's private compound, led by a local English-speaking guide over three hours. The tour includes museum entry and exclusive access to a traditional Balinese royal residence; uneven temple stairs and steep gradients mean you'll need to be comfortable climbing and walking on patchy sidewalks. The guide will call if weather turns severe enough to delay the start.

Step-by-step itinerary

Explore Ubud's cultural landmarks

Visit Ubud's oldest temple
Walk across Dutch colonial bridge
Tour Ubud's oldest art museum
Break for refreshments
Explore Ubud Royal Palace courtyards
Visit palace of Prince Tjokorde Gede Raka Sukawati

The Experience

The tour opens at Ubud's oldest temple, where your guide explains how Hinduism arrived in Bali and what the temple's architecture tells you about community life. From there you walk to the Campuhan Ridge Walk, a modest bridge from the Dutch colonial era that marks a shift in the itinerary—here the focus moves to Indonesia's colonial history and how the Dutch East India Company's presence eventually brought the first tourists to Bali. The bridge itself is the hinge between two stories: spiritual Bali and the Bali that tourism built.

At Puri Lukisan Museum, Ubud's oldest art space, you'll see pre-World War II Balinese pieces and learn how 20th-century Balinese and Western artists collaborated in ways that established Ubud as an arts center. The museum visit includes a short break for refreshments. After that, you move to the outer courtyards of Ubud Palace, where the guide covers the historical and modern roles of Balinese royalty, palace architecture and traditional cremation rituals. The final stop is exclusive access to the compound of Tjokorde Gede Raka Sukawati, the Prince of Ubud, who shaped the city into what it is and co-founded the Pitamaha Foundation. Inside his palace you'll see how traditional Balinese compounds are laid out—a detail most visitors never encounter.

The walk covers three hours total and moves through an urban environment with uneven surfaces. Bring a reusable water bottle; the tour operator is working to reduce plastic in Bali's rivers and will refill it along the way. The guide operates rain or shine, though severe weather may delay the start time—consider that part of the adventure. There's no pickup from your accommodation, so you'll make your own way to the meeting point; public transportation options are available nearby.

What’s included

Local English-speaking guide.
museum entry to Puri Lukisan.
exclusive access to the Prince's private compound.
water refills at a reusable bottle station along the route.
local discounts at participating vendors.

Good to know

Easy physical levelPets welcomePublic transport nearby

Operated by Ubud Story Walks

Is this one for you?This is a shared group tour led by a local guide, so you're walking with other travelers and following a set route and schedule. Choose it if you want the context and stories behind Ubud's landmarks—the colonial history, the art world's role in the city, how royalty shaped it—rather than just seeing the buildings themselves. The three-hour pace and fixed itinerary mean the day is structured for you; you show up and the guide handles the narrative and the access to places like the Prince's compound that you couldn't reach on your own.