Gwangju National Museum

This regional branch of Korea's national museum system focuses on the art and history of the southwestern Jeolla region. It is celebrated for a hoard of Chinese and Korean ceramics and other cargo recovered from a fourteenth-century shipwreck off the nearby coast, a landmark of underwater archaeology. Other galleries display prehistoric dolmen-culture finds, Buddhist art and regional painting. The shipwreck treasure gives the museum an unusual maritime dimension among Korea's provincial collections.