Seoul 🇰🇷
서울 · 97 places · 5 neighbourhoods
Six hundred years old and rebuilt every season.
Neighbourhoods
A city is too big to plan an evening around
Culture in Seoul
Shrines, palaces and quiet rooms
Bukchon Hanok Village
Six hundred traditional houses on a hill between two palaces.
Ihwa Mural Village
A hillside village painted to keep it from being demolished.
Naksan Park & City Wall
Walk the old fortress wall above the rooftops.
Changdeokgung Secret Garden
A royal garden you can only enter with a guide.
Inwangsan & Seonbawi
A shamanic rock shrine on a granite mountain above the city.
Changgyeonggung
The quietest of the five palaces, with a glass greenhouse.
Cafés in Seoul
Long sits and good coffee
Café Onion Seongsu
A bakery inside a factory nobody bothered to redecorate.
Ikseon-dong
A 1920s hanok block of alleys barely wide enough for two.
Yeonnam-dong
A disused railway turned into a long thin park, with cafés either side.
Samcheong-dong
The road up the side of the palace wall.
Anthracite Coffee Hapjeong
A shoe factory, barely converted, pouring coffee.
Fritz Coffee Company Mapo
A hanok bakery-roastery with a seal on the sign.
Shopping in Seoul
Vintage, design and everything odd
Seongsu-dong
Shoe factories turned into flagship stores and pop-ups.
Common Ground
Two hundred shipping containers stacked into a mall.
Starfield Library, COEX
Thirteen-metre bookshelves in the middle of a shopping mall.
Insadong & Ssamziegil
A spiral of craft shops off the antiques street.
Myeongdong Shopping Street
Skincare, street food carts, and a great deal of noise.
Hongdae Walking Street
Buskers every twenty metres, from eight until late.
Landmarks in Seoul
The ones worth the crowd
N Seoul Tower
The whole city, from a hill in the middle of it.
Dongdaemun Design Plaza
Zaha Hadid's silver landscape in the middle of Dongdaemun.
Gyeongbokgung Palace
The main royal palace, with Bugaksan directly behind it.
Gwanghwamun Square
The city’s central axis, aimed at the mountain.
Bukchon Hanok Steps
The stepped lane with the city behind the roof tiles.
Cheong Wa Dae
The Blue House, open to the public since 2022.
Food in Seoul
Markets, counters and late kitchens
Gwangjang Market
Sit on a plastic stool and eat mung bean pancakes.
Mangwon Market
The market Seoul actually shops at.
Euljiro 3-ga
Unmarked bars above lighting shops and print workshops.
Tongin Market
Buy brass coins, fill your own lunchbox.
Namdaemun Market
Six hundred years old and open through the night.
Sindang Tteokbokki Town
One street, one dish, seventy years.
K-Drama in Seoul
The bench, the breakwater, the stone wall
Noksapyeong & Itaewon
The hill of small bars behind Itaewon.
Deoksugung Stonewall Walkway
The walled lane every drama couple ends up walking down.
Gyeongnidan-gil
The hill behind Itaewon where DanBam would have been.
Cheonggyecheon Stream
The sunken stream where every drama argument happens.
Seokchon Lake
A lake loop under cherry trees, with the tower behind it.
Hangang Bridge Pedestrian Deck
The bridge walk that ends half the second acts.
Quieter corners of Seoul
28 places most visitors walk past