Five days in Seoul: mountains in the middle, and nothing shuts early

Four nights in the old centre, one transit card for everything, and two afternoons that finish on a summit.

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Length
5 days, 4 nights
Where you stay
Seoul
Places
14 across 5 days
OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles Data from OpenStreetMap

Seoul is built in a bowl of granite hills, and the hills are not scenery: they are in the middle of the city, with subway stations at the bottom and trails to the top. You can spend a morning in a fifteenth-century throne room and be on a ridge with shamanist shrines on it by two in the afternoon. Very few capitals let you do that without leaving town.

The other thing to know is that almost nothing here is old in the way Kyoto or Rome are old. The Japanese occupation and then the Korean War went through this city and left very little standing. What you see instead is a place that has restored, rebuilt and reinvented itself continuously since 1953, sometimes beautifully and sometimes not, and is entirely unsentimental about it.

Five days is the right length. It gives you the four palace-and-hill days the centre deserves and a departure morning that does not feel rushed, and it leaves the evenings alone, which is when Seoul is at its best.

Highlights

  • The changing of the guard at Gwanghwamun, then the throne hall behind it
  • The Secret Garden at Changdeokgung, which you can only see on a timed tour
  • Seodaemun Prison, the hardest and most necessary hour in the city
  • A walk over Inwangsan, past shaman shrines and the old fortress wall
  • Namsan at dusk, with the whole basin lit up underneath you

Where to stay

Seoul, four nights in the middle

Stay north of the river, somewhere between Seoul Station and Anguk. Myeongdong, Jung-gu and the small streets of Jongno put you inside walking distance of the palaces and a couple of subway stops from the airport train. Gangnam is glossier and a long way from the palaces.

Distances in the centre are smaller than the map suggests: the four palaces, the cathedral, the old city gates and the stream all sit within half an hour's walk of each other. The two days that need more than your feet are the museum day in Yongsan and the hill day in the north west, and both are a single subway ride.

Day by day

Day 1 in Seoul

Namdaemun, the old rail deck and dinner in Myeongdong

Land, get to the centre, and do not plan much. The train from Incheon puts you at Seoul Station, and everything below is within a twenty-minute walk of it, which is exactly what you want on the day you arrive.

The gate is the thing to see first, because it explains what the city has been through. Namdaemun stood for six centuries and then a man with a bottle of thinner burned it down in 2008. Korea spent five years putting it back with traditional joinery and reopened it in 2013, and it is now a rebuilt medieval gate stranded on a traffic island, floodlit at night and quietly defiant.

  1. 15:30

    Seoullo 7017

    Leisure

    A stretch of elevated motorway outside Seoul Station, replanted as a walkway in 2017. Ten minutes on it gives you the shape of the neighbourhood and the first views over the tracks.

  2. 16:30

    Namdaemun Gate

    Historic

    The Great South Gate, formally Sungnyemun, and the country's first-listed national treasure. Walk the market lanes on its northern side afterwards for the cheapest dumplings in central Seoul.

  3. 17:45

    Myeong-Dong Cathedral

    Religious

    A brick cathedral from 1898 on the only hill in Myeongdong, and the place dissidents ran to in the 1980s because the police would not follow them in.

  4. 19:00

    Dinner in the Myeongdong street stalls

    Eat

    The stalls run down the main street from about six in the evening: grilled scallops, egg bread, tornado potatoes. Not the best food in Seoul, easily the best fun on your first night.

With more time: If you land in the morning instead, drop your bags and walk the Namdaemun market lanes properly. The night view from the rail deck is better than the daytime one, so it is worth coming back past it after dinner.

Day 2 in Seoul

Gyeongbokgung, Bukchon and the Secret Garden

The palace day, and the one to protect if the weather forecast is mixed. Two palaces and the lanes between them, walked west to east, ending on a guided tour you should book before you leave home.

Gyeongbokgung was the first Joseon palace and the grandest, razed by a Japanese invasion in 1592 and rebuilt, then gutted again under Japanese rule after 1910. What stands now is largely restoration, and it is done well enough that the scale still lands: courtyard after courtyard, with Bugaksan filling the gap where the far wall should be. The guard changes at the main gate at 10:00 and 14:00 and takes twenty minutes.

Changdeokgung, twenty minutes east, is the better preserved of the two and the one that gets the affection. Its buildings sit where the ground allowed rather than on a grid, and behind them is the Huwon, the walled garden the kings kept for themselves. Entry to the garden is by timed tour only, with English tours at 10:30 and 14:30, and they sell out.

  1. 09:30

    Gyeongbokgung

    Historic

    Arrive by half past nine, walk the throne hall and the pavilion pond first, then come back to the main gate for the ten o'clock guard change. Free hanbok rental gets you in without a ticket, which is why half the courtyard is dressed for the fifteenth century.

  2. 12:00

    Bukchon Hanok Village

    Landmark

    Some 900 tiled roofs on the slope between the two palaces, where the officials who served them lived. Signs restrict visitors to daytime hours in the residential lanes, and people still live behind those walls, so keep your voice down and your camera pointed at the rooflines.

  3. 13:15

    Lunch in the Bukchon lanes

    Eat

    Kalguksu, knife-cut noodles in broth, or a dumpling counter on the way down the hill. Eat early: the small places here fill up by one.

  4. 14:15

    Changdeokgung

    Historic

    Built in 1405 and the seat of power from 1618 to 1896. Walk the blue-roofed office and the royal bedchamber, then join the 14:30 English tour of the Secret Garden, which runs about an hour over two and a half kilometres of paths.

With more time: With more time, the ancestral shrine a few minutes south of Changdeokgung is quieter than either palace and cheaper to enter, and the tea houses in the Insadong alleys are ten minutes further on.

Day 3 in Seoul

The Yongsan collections, then Namsan at dusk

A museum day with a view at the end of it. Both collections are in Yongsan, a kilometre and a half apart, and both are free.

The National Museum is the one to give real time to. The Silla gold crown and the gilt-bronze Pensive Bodhisattva are the pieces people come for, and the ten-storey marble pagoda in the entrance hall is worth a slow circuit. It is very large: pick two floors rather than trying to see everything.

Finish on Namsan. The tower on top is a working broadcast mast with an observation deck bolted on, the padlocks on its fences are a well-worn ritual, and the view at sunset over a city of ten million wrapped in hills is the one image of Seoul that stays with people.

  1. 10:00

    The National Museum of Korea

    Culture

    Opens at ten. Start upstairs with the Silla gold and the seventh-century Bodhisattva, then work down through the celadon. The pagoda from Gyeongcheonsa stands in the central hall and is hard to miss.

  2. 12:45

    Lunch in Ichon

    Eat

    The streets behind the museum are residential and cheap: bibimbap, a bowl of cold noodles in summer, coffee afterwards.

  3. 14:00

    National War Memorial

    Culture

    Korean military history from the ancient kingdoms to the Korean War, with the second floor given over to the Korean War and the UN forces who fought in it. The aircraft and armour outside are free to walk around and take twenty minutes.

  4. 17:00

    N Seoul Tower

    Architecture

    Cable car from a ten-minute walk above Myeongdong station, or forty minutes on foot up through the pines. Go up an hour before sunset and stay for the lights coming on.

With more time: If museums are not your day, swap the war memorial for the art collection in the hills above Itaewon and give the extra hour to Namsan, which has trails on every side of it.

Day 4 in Seoul

Seodaemun Prison, over Inwangsan, down to the Blue House

The hardest morning in Seoul, then a hill, then the house the country was run from. It is a coherent day even though it does not sound like one: all three sit in a two-kilometre arc across the north west of the centre.

Seodaemun Prison was built in 1908 and used by the Japanese colonial authorities to hold, torture and execute Korean independence activists. The cells, the isolation blocks and the execution building are preserved as they were, with wax figures and film that do not soften anything. Most signage is Korean, English-speaking volunteer guides are usually around, and it is not a place to bring young children.

Then walk it off. Inwangsan rises straight out of the neighbourhood behind the prison: 336 metres, a Buddhist temple on the lower slope, Seoul's best-known shamanist shrine above it, and rock formations you can scramble around at the top with the old fortress wall running over the ridge. Rituals are performed up here. Watch quietly if you meet one, and do not photograph it.

  1. 09:30

    Seodaemun Prison

    Historic

    Ninety minutes is enough, and it will be a long ninety minutes. Go early while it is quiet, and take the audio guide if the volunteers are busy.

  2. 11:30

    Inwangsan Mountain

    Visit

    Follow the temple signs uphill from the station exit, past the shrine, and keep going to the rocks at the top. Two hours up and over at a walking pace, in shoes with some grip.

  3. 14:15

    Late lunch in Seochon

    Eat

    The grid of lanes below the hill is full of small kitchens and old-style coffee houses, and it is where you come down. Grilled fish and rice, or a bowl of sujebi.

  4. 15:30

    Cheong Wa Dae

    Historic

    The blue-tiled residence the presidents used from 1948 until it was opened to the public in 2022. Numbers are capped and slots are booked online, and there has been talk of the presidency moving back in, so check that it is still open before you build an afternoon around it.

With more time: If the Blue House is shut or booked out, the fortress wall carries on north from Inwangsan towards Bugaksan and the views get better the higher you go. Bring your passport for that section: parts of it run past military ground and are checked.

Day 5 in Seoul

The stream, the old station hall, and out

A short last morning built around the two things nearest your train. Walk the stream first, then look at the building most people rush straight past on their way to the platforms.

The old Seoul Station went up in 1925 under Japanese rule and ran Korean railways until the glass terminal beside it took over in 2004. It reopened as an exhibition hall in 2011, and whether it is worth an hour depends entirely on what is showing, so put your head round the door and decide.

  1. 08:00

    Breakfast near Gwanghwamun

    Eat

    Coffee and a pastry, or a bowl of seolleongtang if you want to leave the country having eaten what Seoul eats at eight in the morning.

  2. 09:00

    Cheonggye Stream

    Nature

    Drop down to the water at Cheonggyecheon Plaza and walk east with the flow. It was a covered-over freeway until 2005 and is now the coolest strip of central Seoul on a hot day, several degrees below street level in every sense.

  3. 10:30

    Culture Station Seoul 284

    Visit

    The 1925 station building, now a gallery. Usually free, twenty minutes if the exhibition is thin, an hour if it is good, and either way it is next to your platform.

  4. 12:00

    AREX to Incheon Airport

    Travel

    Allow 43 minutes on the express and an hour on the all-stop service, plus the usual queue at check-in. City check-in desks at Seoul Station take some airlines and save you carrying bags.

With more time: With a later flight, the market lanes north of the gate you saw on the first evening are at their best in the middle of the day, and they are ten minutes from the station.

Before you go

Getting in

Nearly everyone arrives at Incheon International Airport, which sits on an island west of the city. The AREX train runs from the basement of both terminals to Seoul Station: the express takes about 43 minutes and the all-stop service is slower and noticeably cheaper. Airport buses cost more than the train and take longer in traffic, but they stop outside hotels, which matters if you land with luggage and a small child.

Gimpo Airport, much closer to the centre, handles domestic flights and short hops to Tokyo, Osaka, Shanghai and Taipei. If you are combining Seoul with Jeju or Busan by air, that is the airport you will use.

Getting around

Buy a T-money card from any convenience store, load it with cash and use it on the subway, the buses and most taxis. The subway is signed in English, announces stations in English, and reaches every place named below. It is also the cheapest way to cross the city by a wide margin.

Download Naver Map or KakaoMap before you arrive. Google Maps cannot give walking or driving directions in South Korea because of restrictions on exporting mapping data, and finding that out at a bus stop in the rain is a bad way to learn it.

When to go

The two good seasons are short and everyone knows it. April brings blossom and mild afternoons, October brings the clearest skies of the year and the foliage on the hills. Both are busy and both are worth it.

Summer is hot, humid and wet, with the heaviest rain in late June and July. Winter is dry and properly cold, with a wind that comes down off the peninsula and makes the palace courtyards feel twice as large as they are.

Closing days

Gyeongbokgung closes on Tuesdays and Changdeokgung on Mondays, so a palace day cannot land on either without losing half of itself. If your dates are fixed, work out which day carries the palaces and build the rest around it.

The pattern that makes Seoul work is the same every day: something old and low in the morning, something high in the afternoon, and a long dinner. The city is flat where the palaces are, vertical everywhere else, and the subway takes the strain in between.

Leave the evenings unplanned. The best hours here are the ones after nine, in a fried chicken place with a plastic table and no English menu, and no itinerary can book those for you.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

Copy to my trips

Common questions

Is five days enough for Seoul?
For the centre, yes. Five days covers the two main palaces, the hanok quarter, the national collections, the prison museum and two hills, at a pace that leaves the evenings free. What it does not cover is Gangnam, the eastern parks, a day at the DMZ or an overnight in a temple, all of which need a day each.
What has to be booked in advance?
Two things. The Secret Garden tour at Changdeokgung is timed, capped and sells out, with English departures at 10:30 and 14:30. The Blue House caps daily visitor numbers and takes online reservations. Everything else in these five days is walk-up.
Can I visit the DMZ from Seoul?
You can, but not on your own: the border area is only accessible on an organised tour, which takes a full day and needs your passport number when you book. If you want it, add a sixth day rather than cutting one of these.
Why will Google Maps not give me directions?
South Korea restricts the export of detailed mapping data, so Google Maps shows the city but cannot route you through it. Naver Map and KakaoMap both work in English and both handle subway, bus and walking directions. Download one at the airport.
Can I change this plan around?
Yes, and you will need to: the palace closing days alone force a reshuffle for some arrival dates. Copy the five days into JourneyComposer and move them about, and the walking order within each day still holds.