There are many people in the world who travel to far away lands and then proceed to do nothing but sit by pools in 5-star hotels and party in Western-style bars. There are others who visit a new place and immediately seek out the museums and true historical sites. I fit somewhere in between but definitely closer to the museums and monuments people than the hotels and hot-spots types. I like to discover a place by walking around and looking at things. Sometimes those things turn out to be monuments or historical places. In Seoul, for example, I saw an historically important palace.

Changdeokgung Palace complex is particularly important because it is apparently the best preserved in Seoul, as well as being a UNESCO world heritage site.  The complex was apparently completed in 1412 and home to Korean royalty as recently as 1910. It was the principle palace for many of the Joseon Kings who ruled the area for 300 years. The palace was burnt down during the Japanese invasion in 1592 and the story goes that either during that invasion or one of the others the Japanese actually took parts of the palace with them. It was all subsequently restored, however, and now stands empty but in perfect condition in it’s beautiful garden grounds. One site describes this as the ‘most truly Korean’ of all the palaces in it’s architecture, the choice to build the palace up and down the many terraces in the gardens and the integration of the buildings into the natural settings. This could all be fanciful but it definitely felt as though the palaces belonged in their surroundings.

We took the bus to the palace – the gate of which is clearly visible from the road, making it super-easy to find from the bus, paid our 3000 won entry fee and joined the crowds at the gate. It turns out  (which we didn’t realise at the time) that it is not permissible to see the palace without being part of a guided tour, and as we had missed the English tour, we joined up with the next large group – we think they were speaking Korean. Tours are offered in Korean, English, Chinese and possibly Japanese. It turns out, on further investigation, that tours are obligatory every day except Thursdays, when there are no guided tours, the entry fee increases to 15000 won and you are allowed to wander around by yourself, perhaps indicating the advantages of researching before venturing out on adventures.

This being a Saturday afternoon, we trailed along behind a group. It didn’t really matter, though. There were occasional English signs explaining what one part or another of the palace was used for or when it was built. To be honest, because this palace was used for so long and Korean political history during that period seems to be rather convoluted and involve an awful lot of alliances with, attempts to prevent invasion by and eventual invasions by foreign powers, plus the standard palace intrigue and occasional citizen unhappiness, it would be really difficult to make sense of it all and establish any sort of mental chronology without a lot more information and context than could be provided by information boards and an 80-minute tour. I want to learn more about the palace and have started to read bits and pieces  since, but all that is something that can happen any time with a book and/or the internet. It has little, apart from providing context, to do with actually being in the place and walking around a real-life palace.

Perhaps some context of my own at this point: Africa doesn’t really go in for palaces much. At least Southern Africa doesn’t. This doesn’t mean we don’t have royals and court intrigue, but there are fewer buildings. Because I also haven’t travelled to Europe and not really to many other places, I don’t think I’ve ever been into a palace before. I suppose it’s one of those moments when you realise history is real. It’s also a realisation that as much as my skin may be pale, my context is thoroughly African. In my mind, the system of tribal leadership and rulers like Shaka and Moshoeshoe are real monarchies. They are the ones that I have grown up learning about and which have therefore become tangible and real in my mind. I know, intellectually, that Europe and other areas had many royals and still has some floating around but they have always been as ephemeral to me as characters in story books or pop stars on TV. Before this weekend, I didn’t know I felt this way. I realise that that is an odd thing to say, but it seems to be true. Walking around that palace in the pouring rain, the idea of royalty, of kings and queens and princes and queen mothers actually living in these rooms and sitting in these halls and walking between the buildings, on a day just like that day – a rainy, chilly autumn afternoon – suddenly seemed, for the first time, so interesting and real.

At the palace, beyond the magnificent gate, called Tonhwamun and the oldest wooden gate in Seoul, we wandered across little stone bridges, past strategically-placed trees in magnificent autumn colours. The next entrance led us to a large rectangular courtyard, with corridors of wooden shutters or doors on the two longer sides and an entrance at either short end. These entrances are what arches would be in some other architectural styles – open spaces leading from one area to another – except that here they are shaped more like large rectangular open doorways, each with a tradition Korean roof over the top. By somewhat strange coincidence, in the taxi home last night (it was too cold for the bus), I found myself inadvertently watching a Korean period drama on the the mini, in-car TV and I could just picture those soldiers lining up in that courtyard. Of course, I have no idea if the period was right but I found it so easy to imagine real soldiers and servants actually being and doing in that space.

Some of the areas of the palace were a little sad. We came across one signboard explaining that what we were looking at was Daejojeon, the king and queen’s residence, but that this was also the place where the Joseon dynasty held its last cabinet meeting to deliberate on the annexation of Korea by Japan. My imagination conjured up images of royal banquets and dinners and lives of joys and complications, all overlayed with the imagined picture that last desperate meeting and the sense of impending loss because the Japanese are coming.

At another point, we stopped at a slightly separate building, built later and in a slightly different style, from what we could gather, to accommodate the king taking a second wife. This area includes a beautiful round, tower-balcony that reminded me a lot of the widow’s walks I saw in Key West, Florida. I can picture the ousted, forgotten first wife, whose crime was her inability to give the king a son, standing on that tower for hours looking out over the palace grounds that used to be hers. Of course, I could have misunderstood the history completely, but that is what I pictured at the time.

There are areas of the palace that still contain some furniture, such as tables and chairs, writing desks and something that could be a throne or a very impressive bed, all of which is fascinatingly ornate and appears even more so in the otherwise empty rooms. All over there are heavy wooden doors and thin paper screens, green and red and blue and white paint, painted flowers and designs and incredibly detailed, busy decorations on the underside of roofs. Walking around, it felt like all the rooms and corridors and courtyards were inter-leading and connected – the place must be something of a maze to find your way around without a map. There was also a sense of regularity; because almost all walls and windows and buildings use the same colour scheme, the variations in design like the lattice-windows installed by one of the kings (apparently indicating his taste for foreign ideas)  provide texture rather than disrupting the whole.

We did not see the lotus pond or a couple of other interesting parts of the palace complex but after 45 minutes we were fairly thoroughly soaked and so decided to leave that for another day and get out of the rain. I really enjoyed seeing the palace. The friend I was with has seen one or two of the others and says that this is the most spectacular, if somewhat annoyingly controlled (in that you can’t explore alone). I’d like to see some others and return to this one on another visit to Seoul. Of course, I’d also like to see Changdoekgung in the sunshine but there was something magical about seeing it on a rainy autumn day; somehow the rain and the season made it so much more authentic, so much easier to imagine not just the feasts and royal occasions but kings and queens and emperors really living there and just going about their day.