9 Stunning Architecture Landmarks in Seoul
9 landmarks with verified facts and stories
Bukchon Hanok Village
Bukchon-ro, Seoul, South Korea
Bukchon Hanok Village is a hillside neighbourhood of 600-year-old traditional Korean hanok houses wedged between two palaces — Gyeongbokgung to the west and Changdeokgung to the east — and it is simultaneously one of Seoul's most photographed attractions and a residential neighbourhood where actual people live, a tension that has made it one of the most debated tourism management challenges in the city.
COEX Mall & Starfield Library
Yeongdong-daero, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, South Korea
COEX is the largest underground shopping mall in Asia — a subterranean city beneath the Gangnam convention district that houses over 300 shops, a multiplex cinema, an aquarium, and the Starfield Library, which has become the most photographed interior space in Seoul.
Deoksugung Palace
Sejong-daero 20-gil, Seoul, South Korea
Deoksugung is the most accessible and unusual of Seoul's five palaces — a compact compound in the heart of the business district where traditional Korean palace halls sit alongside Western neoclassical buildings, reflecting the turbulent period in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when Korea was being pulled between Asian tradition and Western modernity.
Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP)
Eulji-ro, Seoul, South Korea
The Dongdaemun Design Plaza is Zaha Hadid's silver spaceship — a 86,574-square-metre cultural complex with no straight lines, no right angles, and a flowing neo-futuristic exterior that looks like liquid metal frozen in the process of pouring.
Gyeongbokgung Palace
Sajik-ro, Seoul, South Korea
Gyeongbokgung is the largest and grandest of Seoul's five Joseon dynasty palaces — built in 1395 as the main royal residence and the seat of government for a dynasty that would rule Korea for over 500 years.
Jongmyo Shrine
Jong-ro, Seoul, South Korea
Jongmyo Shrine is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the most sacred Confucian site in Korea — a royal ancestral shrine where the spirit tablets of Joseon dynasty kings and queens have been venerated for over 600 years.
Leeum Museum of Art
Itaewon-ro, Seoul, South Korea
Leeum is the Samsung family's private art museum — a world-class collection housed in three buildings designed by three of the most celebrated architects of the late 20th century: Mario Botta (the terracotta rotunda for traditional Korean art), Jean Nouvel (the black glass box for contemporary art), and Rem Koolhaas (the concrete-and-glass structure for special exhibitions).
Lotte World Tower & Seoul Sky
300 Olympic-ro, Songpa-gu, Seoul
Lotte World Tower is the tallest building in Korea and the fifth tallest in the world — a 123-storey, 555-metre glass tower that tapers toward the sky like a ceramic brush used in Korean calligraphy, which is exactly the design metaphor that KPF Architects intended.
Seoullo 7017
405 Hangang-daero, Jung-gu, Seoul
Seoullo 7017 is Seoul's answer to New York's High Line — a 983-metre elevated pedestrian garden built on a 1970 highway overpass near Seoul Station that was converted in 2017 from a crumbling road into a linear park planted with 24,000 trees and plants.
Explore architecture in Seoul
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