Gwangju's history runs from the Baekje fortress walls on Mudeungsan to the Joseon scholars' gardens of Chunghyo-dong, then collides with 1980, when citizens held the city for nine days. This route follows all three layers on foot and by metro.
Opened 1978 to house the Sinan shipwreck hoard — 20,000+ Yuan-dynasty ceramics recovered from a 1323 trading junk off Jeolla's coast — plus Baekje gilt bronzes and Jeolla celadon. Open 09:00–18:00, closed Mondays.
A Jeolla-style baekban lunch of ttaro gukbap — rice and beef broth served separately, a Gwangju invention — with a dozen banchan refilled free. Expect ₩10,000–13,000 a head and a queue of local office workers.
Founded in 517 during the Silla period and rebuilt after fire in 1970, this Jogye-order temple keeps an iron seated Vairocana Buddha from the 9th century and a Goryeo-era three-storey pagoda in the Obaekjeon hall courtyard.
Built around 1530 by scholar Yang San-bo after his teacher Jo Gwang-jo was executed in a purge — a Joseon literati garden of bamboo, stone channels and two pavilions, Jewoldang and Gwangpunggak. Open 09:00–18:00.
Opened 1997 after years of campaigning, this is where the uprising's dead were reinterred from Mangwol-dong. A 40m memorial tower stands over 700+ graves, each with a photograph. Open 09:00–18:00 daily.
Paratroopers held and killed detainees here during the 1980 siege; excavations in 2019 uncovered 260 unidentified remains beneath the grounds. The relocated compound now stands as a preserved site of the uprising's unresolved disappearances.
A reconstruction of the Sangmudae compound where roughly 400 citizens were tried by military tribunal after the uprising. The courtroom, detention barracks and interrogation rooms were rebuilt on this site in 1998. Open 09:00–18:00.
The uprising began here on the morning of 18 May 1980 when students confronting paratroopers were beaten, and the fighting spread down Geumnam-daero. A stone marker at the gate records the date and the first casualties.
American Southern Presbyterians settled this hillside from 1904, leaving red-brick houses, the Owen Memorial Hall of 1914 and the Wilson House. Gwangju's first modern hospital and schools began here. Most houses viewable from outside; museums open 10:00–17:00.
A hillside of 1960s–70s low-rise housing that emptied out, then filled with salvaged clocks, radios and sewing machines nailed to the walls by remaining elderly residents — an accidental museum of Korea's industrialisation-era domestic life.
The 1899 hanok of independence-movement figure Yi Jang-woo, with its original wooden gate and garden, sits near the Chunghyo-dong village where Joseon scholars built study pavilions. Open 09:00–18:00, closed Mondays.
Daein Market opened in the 1950s serving refugees and rebuilt traders, declined in the 1990s, and was revived from 2008 when artists took empty stalls. Original tin-roofed shopfronts and the night market on Saturdays remain.