The Five Palaces of Seoul, and Which Ones to Actually Visit

The main palace of the Joseon dynasty, founded in 1395, burned in 1592, rebuilt in the 1860s and dismantled again under Japanese rule. What stands now is a long restoration, and the pleasure is the siting: the throne hall on its terrace with Bugaksan directly behind it, and a sightline from the gate through three courtyards to the mountain.

It is also the busiest, the biggest and the one with the programme — the changing of the guard at 10:00 and 14:00, a sentry ceremony at 11:00 and 13:00, and evening openings in the published autumn and spring seasons. Two national museums stand on the grounds and cost nothing.

Give it ninety minutes, or three hours with the museums. Closed Tuesdays. Full page here.

Built in 1405 as a secondary palace and used as the working seat of the court for some 270 years while Gyeongbokgung lay in ruins. UNESCO listed it in 1997 because it follows the terrain instead of imposing a grid on it, and you feel that within five minutes of Donhwamun — the oldest surviving palace gate in the city, from 1412.

The reason to come is the Huwon, the rear garden, which is guided timed entry at ₩5,000 on top of the palace ticket: ponds, pavilions, a library on a slope and a stream cut for floating wine cups. Sessions run by language, one hundred places each, half sold online six days ahead and half at the gate on the day.

Closed Mondays. Booking rules and the session timetable.

Changgyeonggung shares a wall with Changdeokgung and a connecting gate, which makes it the cheapest add-on in Seoul: forty minutes and ₩1,000 once you are already next door.

It was built for the retired queens of the fifteenth century and treated badly afterwards — under Japanese rule it was turned into a zoo and botanical garden, and the great iron-and-glass greenhouse from 1909 still stands at the top of the slope, which is the single strangest building on any palace ground in Korea. The pond below it, Chundangji, is where the city walks in autumn.

Like Deoksugung it stays open to 21:00, and the night-opening area moves with the season: the published schedule shifts visitors from the daytime zone into the lit night zone at 17:30 in winter and 18:30 in midsummer. Closed Mondays.

Small, central, ₩1,000, beside City Hall, and open until 21:00 every day it opens — the only one. It became a palace by default after 1592 and had its real moment three centuries later, when Gojong declared the Korean Empire here in 1897 and built a stone neoclassical hall a hundred metres from the Joseon throne hall.

The guard ceremony at Daehanmun runs at 11:00 and 14:00, thirty minutes each, and the stone-wall road along the western side is the most-photographed street in the centre.

This is the palace to keep for after dinner rather than to fit into a morning. Full page here.

Jongmyo is not a palace but the royal ancestral shrine, where the spirit tablets of the Joseon kings are kept, and it is the site that stays with people longest. There is almost nothing to look at: one immense unpainted wooden hall, 101 metres long, standing above a rough stone courtyard, with no colour, no decoration and no furniture. That is the point.

It runs on timed entry on weekdays with sessions by language — English at 10:00, 12:00, 14:00 and 16:00 — and 200 places per session, half online and half at the gate. On Saturdays, Sundays and the last Wednesday of the month you can walk it freely without a session.

Entry is ₩1,000, it closes on Tuesdays with Gyeongbokgung, and it is eight minutes' walk from Changdeokgung. UNESCO listed it in 1995, two years before Changdeokgung.

The five sites sit in a rough L across the north of the old city, and the closing days split the week, so a plan has to start with the calendar rather than the map.

A Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday or Saturday works for Gyeongbokgung; any day but Monday works for Changdeokgung, Changgyeonggung and Deoksugung; Jongmyo follows Gyeongbokgung onto Tuesday. That leaves Wednesday to Sunday as the days when everything is open, and Monday and Tuesday as days when you take one half of the list. The full closed-day map is here.

Morning one: Gyeongbokgung from 09:00, the guard change at 10:00, then the National Palace Museum, then downhill through Bukchon.

Morning two: Changdeokgung with a booked Huwon session, through the connecting gate into Changgyeonggung, then south to Jongmyo. Finish at Deoksugung after dark on the same ₩6,000 ticket, and you have seen all five for the price of two.