Seoul spends more on public art per capita than any Asian capital, and it shows: Ando and Koolhaas buildings sit two subway stops from 600-year-old hanok alleys. Three days through Samcheong-dong galleries, national museums and the ink-stained workshops of Euljiro.
Built on the former Defense Security Command site in 2013, MMCA Seoul buries eight galleries underground so the red-brick 1930s military hospital survives above. Open 10:00–18:00, Wed and Sat until 21:00, closed Mondays. Admission ₩2,000.
Korea's most influential commercial gallery since 1982, representing Lee Ufan, Kimsooja and Anish Kapoor. K3, the chainmail-clad extension by SO-IL, is wrapped in 510,000 stainless steel rings. Free entry, 10:00–18:00, closed Mondays.
Kim Swoo-geun's 1971 SPACE Group headquarters, Korea's first registered modern-architecture heritage building, its dark-brick maze of half-levels now holding Kim Chang-il's collection of Nara, Kusama and Subodh Gupta. Open 10:00–19:00.
Zaha Hadid's 45,000 sq m aluminium blob, clad in 45,133 individually curved panels no two of which are identical, opened 2014 over the excavated Joseon-era Igansumun water gates. Exterior and Design Market free; exhibitions ₩8,000–15,000.
Three buildings by Mario Botta, Jean Nouvel and Rem Koolhaas on one Namsan slope: Botta's terracotta rotunda holds celadon and Joseon ink painting, Nouvel's corroded-steel boxes the contemporary work. Open 10:00–18:00, closed Mondays.
Korea's oldest permanent market, opened 1905, where the northern aisle grinds mung beans on stone mills for bindaetteok pancakes fried in front of you. Sit at Sunhui-ne Bindaetteok's counter for ₩5,000 a plate with makgeolli.
Korea's traditional-music institution stages pansori, sanjo and court ensemble programmes in a sunken hanok-roofed hall at the foot of Namsan. Afternoon matinees run most weekends; the Saturday Gugak Concert series is the reliable slot.
Roughly 130 small theatres pack the streets behind Hyehwa Station, Korea's densest concentration of stages, seeded when Seoul National University's campus moved out in 1975. Ticket booths on Marronnier Park sell same-evening seats from ₩20,000.
The Confucian royal ancestral shrine of the Joseon kings, built 1394, whose 101-metre Jeongjeon hall is the longest single wooden building in Asia. UNESCO-listed; the Jongmyo Jerye rite each May is an intangible heritage performance.
Six blocks of lighting shops, steel cutters and offset print houses where young artists have opened studios above the machine floors. The Euljiro Nodeulmok and Sinseong-dong lanes hide bars behind unmarked stairwells above welding workshops.
A 1950s hillside settlement of refugee housing painted over in 2006 under the Naksan Public Art Project, with roughly 70 murals along the Seoul City Wall ridge. Residents still live here; several works were erased by locals tired of crowds.
The 'west village' below Inwangsan, where poet Yi Sang and painter Park No-soo lived. Daeo Seojeom, opened 1951, is Seoul's oldest surviving bookshop, now half café. Park No-soo Art Museum occupies his 1937 hanok-Western hybrid house.