Deoksugung Palace and the Stone-Wall Road

Deoksugung began as a royal villa and became a palace by accident: after the Imjin War of the 1590s left every other palace burned, the court moved in because the villa had survived. Its main period came three centuries later, when Gojong took refuge here after the murder of Empress Myeongseong, declared the Korean Empire in 1897, and set about building a modern capital around a Joseon palace.

That is why the compound looks the way it does. Junghwajeon, the throne hall, is a conventional Joseon hall on a stone terrace. A hundred metres away, Seokjojeon is a stone neoclassical building with a colonnade, designed by a British architect and finished in 1910, and Jeonggwanheon is a pavilion with a Russian-influenced veranda where Gojong drank coffee — the first place in Korea where anyone did.

The compound is small enough to cross in ten minutes, and the contrast is the point. Nowhere else in Seoul puts the last years of the Joseon dynasty and the arrival of the twentieth century quite so bluntly on the same lawn.

Junghwajeon is the throne hall and the obvious first stop, with its rank stones and painted ceiling; the courtyard is small enough that you see the whole thing at once rather than walking a processional route.

Seokjojeon is the reason to allow more than an hour. The stone hall was built as an imperial residence and now presents the Korean Empire's brief history in restored period rooms; it runs on its own timed admission with limited numbers, so if the interior matters, check the palace's reservation page before you go rather than at the door. Dondeokjeon, rebuilt and reopened in recent years, closes earlier than the grounds at 17:30, as does Jungmyeongjeon outside the wall — the building where the 1905 protectorate treaty was signed.

Jeonggwanheon, the coffee pavilion, sits up a slope at the back and is the quietest bench in central Seoul at six in the evening. The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art has a branch inside the palace grounds, which makes this the only royal compound where you can see a contemporary exhibition and a throne hall on one ₩1,000 ticket.

Deoksugung-gil, the road that runs along the palace's western wall, is the most-photographed street in central Seoul and the setting of a song that every Korean over thirty knows. It is a five-minute walk under old trees with the palace wall on one side and the Seoul Museum of Art at the far end, and it is at its best in late October when the ginkgos go yellow, or after rain at night when the lamps reflect off the paving.

There is a superstition attached: couples who walk the road together are said to break up. Nobody believes it and everybody mentions it.

The road links naturally to the rest of the district. Seoul Museum of Art is at the top, closed Mondays like the palace; City Hall's glass wave and the plaza in front of it are two minutes east; and Myeongdong's food streets are ten minutes beyond that, which makes the sequence palace, wall road, dinner the standard evening.

Evening, for a simple reason: at 21:00 closing, Deoksugung is open three hours after every other palace in Seoul has shut, and the halls are lit. On a summer night that is the difference between a sweltering courtyard at two in the afternoon and a comfortable walk at eight.

The guard ceremony pushes you to 11:00 or 14:00 if you want it, which conflicts with the palace's best light. The workable compromise is the ceremony at 14:00, an hour at Gyeongbokgung or a museum after it, and a return here at dusk on the same ticket — the ticket is valid for that day's entry only, so the return trip needs a second ₩1,000, which nobody is going to notice.

Autumn is the season the wall road earns its reputation, and the first two weeks of November are the peak. Winter evenings are cold, empty and, with the snow on the throne-hall roof, better than the photographs suggest.