Changdeokgung

Where it sits. Changdeokgung lies east of Gyeongbokgung at the foot of the same granite ridge, occupying a long wedge of ground that climbs from the Jongno street grid into a wooded valley. It was built in 1405 as a secondary palace under King Taejong, burned in the invasions of 1592, and rebuilt from 1609. For most of the following two and a half centuries it served as the working royal residence, which is why it feels lived-in where Gyeongbokgung feels ceremonial. UNESCO inscribed it as a World Heritage Site in 1997, citing precisely the quality that distinguishes it: the buildings are arranged to follow the terrain rather than to impose an axis on it.

A palace that bends. Donhwamun, the front gate, dates from 1609 and is the oldest surviving palace gate in Seoul. Inside, the route turns rather than driving straight ahead, crossing the stone Geumcheongyo bridge of 1411 — the oldest bridge in the city — before angling into the throne courtyard. Injeongjeon, the throne hall rebuilt in 1804, shows the dynasty's last chapter in its fittings: electric lighting, glass windows and a wooden floor replacing the original clay were installed around 1908 under Japanese influence, so a hall of Joseon proportion contains Edwardian hardware. The administrative buildings alongside, Seonjeongjeon with its rare blue-glazed roof tiles and the Huijeongdang residence, complete a complex still legible as a place of daily government.

The rear garden. Behind the palace, occupying around sixty per cent of the whole site, lies Huwon — the rear garden, widely called the Secret Garden — some thirty-two hectares of wooded valley kept as a royal retreat and entered only on timed guided tours with a separate ticket and a capped headcount. Its centrepiece is Buyongji, a square pond with a round island expressing the old cosmology of square earth and round heaven. The Buyongjeong pavilion of 1792 stands with two of its stone legs in the water, its plan a cross with a projecting bay. Above it rises Juhamnu, built in 1776 by King Jeongjo to house the royal library and its scholars. Deeper in are Aeryeonjeong beside its lotus pond, the Yeongyeongdang complex of 1828 built deliberately in the plain style of a scholar's house rather than a palace, and Ongnyucheon, where in 1636 a U-shaped channel was carved into the bedrock so that cups of wine could be floated round it during poetry games, with a royal inscription cut above and a small artificial waterfall below. A Chinese juniper near the entrance is estimated at some seven and a half centuries old.

On screen. The palace's clearest film connection is Nakseonjae, the unpainted residential compound built in 1847 by King Heonjong, left without the usual polychrome dancheong in a gesture of restraint. In the twentieth century it became the last home of the Korean royal family. Crown Princess Yi Bangja and Princess Deokhye, the daughter of Emperor Gojong who had been taken to Japan as a child, lived out their final years there and both died in April 1989 — which places the end of the dynasty inside living memory and inside this walled courtyard. Hur Jin-ho's 2016 feature The Last Princess, with Son Ye-jin as Deokhye, dramatised her removal to Japan and her return to Seoul in 1962, when she came back to Nakseonjae. As at the other palaces, dramas set in the Joseon court are overwhelmingly filmed on replica sets rather than here, and the buildings that appear on screen most often are the ones at Yongin and Mungyeong. The palace does stage one production of its own: the Moonlight Tour, run on selected evenings in spring and autumn, walks small ticketed groups through the courtyards and into the rear garden by lantern light, with court music performed at Buyongji and refreshments served at Yeongyeongdang. Tickets are balloted and go within minutes of release, and the garden after dark, with the pond black and the pavilion lit from within, is a different building altogether.

Getting there and timing. Anguk Station on Line 3, exit 3, is a few minutes' walk from Donhwamun; the palace also connects directly on foot to Bukchon and to Jongmyo shrine across the road. Admission to the palace is inexpensive, with a second ticket for the Huwon tour, which runs several times daily in Korean, English, Chinese and Japanese and should be reserved online during autumn. It closes on Mondays. The rear garden peaks around the first week of November, when the maples above Buyongji turn and the tours book out. Palace courtyards are broad and largely level, though gravelled; the garden route is a hillside path with gradients and steps, and it is hard going without assistance.