Seoul has been a capital since 1394, and almost nothing here is only one age deep. Royal shrines sit beside colonial prisons, and a Baekje earthen fortress predates the Joseon walls by a thousand years. These three days follow that sequence.
UNESCO-listed Confucian royal shrine from 1394, holding spirit tablets of 19 Joseon kings and queens in the 101-metre Jeongjeon hall, Korea's longest wooden building. Timed guided tours only, except Saturdays. Open 09:00-18:00, closed Tuesdays.
Built 1405 as a detached palace, Changdeokgung became the main royal residence for 270 years after the Japanese invasions burned Gyeongbokgung. Its Huwon rear garden covers 78 acres of ponds and pavilions on separate ticketed tours.
Some 45,000 royal Joseon artefacts — throne screens, royal seals, the 1434 Honcheonui armillary clock, King Gojong's 1903 Cadillac-era imperial carriage — arranged across three floors by dynasty, court ritual and science.
The best-preserved walkable stretch of the 18.6 km fortress wall Taejo raised in 1396, where stones from four eras are visible: rough 14th-century boulders, Sejong's rectangular blocks, and Sukjong's uniform 1704 masonry near the crest.
Japanese colonial prison opened 1908, where independence activists including 16-year-old Yu Gwan-sun died. Original brick cell blocks, the underground interrogation rooms and the execution building survive. Open 09:30-18:00, closed Mondays.
Korea's first modern public park, where students read the Declaration of Independence aloud on 1 March 1919, triggering nationwide protests and roughly 7,500 deaths. Bronze relief panels ring the pavilion, alongside a 1467 marble pagoda.
Built on the former army headquarters site, covering conflicts from Goguryeo to the 1950-53 Korean War in exhaustive detail. Outdoor grounds hold 150 aircraft, tanks and a B-52; the Hall of Names lists 170,000-plus war dead on bronze plaques.
Where Emperor Gojong proclaimed the Korean Empire in 1897 and where he died in 1919. The neoclassical Seokjojeon, finished 1910 by British architect Harding, stands beside wooden throne halls — Korea's collision of eras in one courtyard.
Korea's largest museum, 310,000 artefacts spanning the Palaeolithic to the Joseon fall. The Bangasayusang pensive bodhisattvas from the 6th-7th century sit in a darkened room of their own, and the 1348 Gyeongcheonsa pagoda fills the atrium.
Seoul's oldest planned hanok district, laid out in 1920 by developer Jeong Se-kwon as affordable Korean housing to resist Japanese-style construction. Roughly 100 small courtyard houses survive in alleys barely two metres wide.
Burial mounds of King Seongjong (d. 1494), Queen Jeonghyeon and King Jungjong, ringed by stone guardians and enclosed by office towers. Japanese troops looted and burned the tombs in 1592; the mounds were rebuilt with empty coffins.
A 2.3 km earthwork rampart built around the 3rd century by the Baekje kingdom, when this was Wiryeseong — Seoul's capital 1,100 years before Joseon. Excavations turned up Chinese pottery and wooden defensive stakes still visible in situ.