Miyajima means shrine-island, a direct reference to Itsukushima Shrine, and the image most commonly associated with the island is the shrine’s floating torii gate set in the Seto Inland Sea. The red-lacquered complex of buildings are connected by boardwalks, built so commoners could visit without defiling the ground by walking on it, so, in the days before mass tourism, commoners approached by water, steering their boats through the torii before approaching the shrine, built so it was separate from the sacred island, and existed on the threshold between the sacred and the profane.
Away from the shrine and its boardwalks nowadays paths take visitors around the inlet to other shrines and temples and to the island's highest peak, Mount Misen, which has been worshiped by local people since the sixth century.