Bukhansan National Park
Seoul, South Korea
Bukhansan National Park is a mountain wilderness 40 minutes from downtown Seoul — 80 square kilometres of granite peaks, Buddhist temples, Joseon-era fortress walls, and forest trails that make it the most-visited national park per unit area in the world.
Cheonggyecheon Stream
Cheonggyecheon-ro, Seoul, South Korea
Cheonggyecheon is an 11-kilometre stream running through the centre of Seoul that spent most of the 20th century buried under a highway and was restored in 2005 in one of the most ambitious urban renewal projects in the world.
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.
Gyeonghuigung Palace
Saemunan-ro, Seoul, South Korea
Gyeonghuigung is the secret palace — the fifth and least known of Seoul's Joseon-era palaces, hidden behind a modern government building and visited by a fraction of the tourists who crowd the other four.
Jogyesa Temple
55 Ujeongguk-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul
Jogyesa is the head temple of Korean Zen Buddhism — the administrative and spiritual centre of the Jogye Order, which oversees the majority of Buddhist temples and monks in South Korea.
Naksan Park & Ihwa Mural Village
41 Naksan-gil, Jongno-gu, Seoul
Naksan Park is a hilltop park on the eastern edge of Seoul's old city wall that offers one of the best sunrise views in the city — a panorama from the wall's ramparts that takes in the palace district, Namsan Tower, and the modern skyline in a single sweep.
National Museum of Korea
137 Seobinggo-ro, Yongsan-gu, Seoul
The National Museum of Korea is the largest museum in Asia — a massive glass-and-stone building in Yongsan housing over 400,000 artifacts that trace 5,000 years of Korean civilisation, from Palaeolithic stone tools to Joseon-era celadon and modern art.
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.
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