Poseokjeong

The remains of a royal pleasure garden on the wooded slopes of Namsan in Gyeongju, where Silla kings and nobles held wine-drinking poetry gatherings. Its defining feature is a stone channel carved in the shape of an abalone shell, along which cups of wine once floated on flowing water so that a guest had to compose a verse before the cup reached them. The wooden pavilion is long gone, but the sinuous stone watercourse survives, evoking the refined court leisure of the ancient kingdom in its final centuries.