Bongeunsa Temple

Bongeunsa is a 1,200-year-old Buddhist temple hidden in the shadow of Gangnam's glass towers — a spiritual enclave of wooden halls, stone pagodas, and ancient trees that provides the most jarring contrast in a city full of jarring contrasts. The COEX Mall and the Trade Tower loom directly behind the temple compound, and the juxtaposition of a 9th-century temple with a 21st-century commercial district is so visually surreal that it's become one of Seoul's defining images.

The temple was founded in 794 during the Silla dynasty and has been a centre of Buddhist study and practice for over 1,200 years. The 23-metre Maitreya Buddha statue, carved from a single granite block and erected in 1996, stands at the base of the hillside and is the largest stone Buddha in Korea. Behind it, the temple buildings climb the forested slope of Sudo Mountain in a sequence of courtyards, meditation halls, and bell towers that feels increasingly removed from the city as you ascend.

Bongeunsa's Temple Stay programme is one of the most popular in Seoul — an overnight programme that includes evening chanting, prostrations, a pre-dawn wake-up for the 3am bell ceremony, morning meditation, and a Buddhist meal. The temple's location means you can participate in a traditional monastic routine and be back in Gangnam for breakfast at a café, which is the kind of temporal whiplash that only Seoul delivers. Regular visitors include Gangnam office workers who stop in for a few minutes of meditation during their lunch break.