Seoullo 7017

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. The name combines '70' (built in 1970) with '17' (reborn in 2017), and the concept — turning automotive infrastructure into green public space — reflects Seoul's broader effort to reclaim the city from cars.

The design, by Dutch firm MVRDV, organises 645 planters along the elevated walkway in a pattern that creates a botanical garden above the traffic: the plants are arranged by Korean name in Korean alphabetical order, creating a 'plant dictionary' that you walk through from ㄱ to ㅎ. Seating areas, performance spaces, cafés, and trampolines for children are scattered along the route, and the elevated perspective gives you views of Seoul Station (a Japanese colonial-era building), the old city wall, Namdaemun Market, and the surrounding neighbourhood that you can't see from street level.

The walkway connects Seoul Station to Namdaemun Market and the Malli-dong neighbourhood, making it a practical pedestrian link as well as a park. Evening visits are best — the lighting design makes the planters and walkway glow, and the views of the city at night from an elevated garden have a quality that ground-level parks can't match. The park is free, open until 11pm, and accessible from Seoul Station subway.