The museum without walls — Korea's most ancient royal capital, its burial mounds rising in the middle of the city, Bulguksa temple gold, and the finest makgeolli in Korea
Gyeongju was the capital of the Silla Kingdom for almost a thousand years (57 BCE–935 CE) — one of the longest-running royal capitals in world history — and the density of its historical remains earned it the nickname 'the museum without walls.' Royal burial mounds (tumuli) the size of apartment buildings rise in the middle of the modern city, flanked by parks, cafés, and cherry blossom in spring. The Bulguksa temple complex (UNESCO, 751 CE) and the Seokguram cave temple (UNESCO, 774 CE) on a forested mountain above the city represent the peak of Silla-era Buddhist art: the stone architecture…
The Silla kingdom (57 BCE–935 CE) was one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea — controlling the southeastern peninsula, in cultural contact with the Tang dynasty of China, and producing one of the most sophisticated Buddhist material cultures in East Asia in its Unified Silla period (668–935 CE). The burial mounds (tumuli) around Gyeongju are the graves of Silla royalty and aristocracy — the Cheonmachong tomb (Heavenly Horse Tomb), excavated in 1973, yielded over 11,500 gold, silver, and bronze artefacts including the famous Heavenly Horse painting on birch bark (the oldest surviving Korean painti…