Seoul

One private house will show what the city’s preservation program left in place.

This is where the story of the decision to bring water back to the car-filled city center begins.

The finale will connect the new architecture with the finds that forced the project to change.

Here, the palace’s main entrance turns out to be both a program of virtuous rule and a difficult military target.

This stop will show how a former palace guard fixed the official hierarchy in stone.

The ceremonial courtyard will help us understand how a seizure of the throne acquired a lawful form.

This stop will show how a monument can be preserved while also being stripped of its former purpose.

Here, the route begins with an attempt to obtain a government post and the price of one such attempt.

Here you will learn how merchants secured a permanent place and control over it.

Carved masonry will link a city crossing to the struggle for the Joseon throne.

Here, the consequences of a palace ceremony will turn into a choice between giving up life and trying to restore the former king.

Here, defensive architecture meets a morning when there was no one left to defend it.

The garden will show how the king sought his own circle of officials among books, manuscripts, and pavilions.

Two neighboring halls make it possible to reconstruct the day when an heir exchanged mourning for royal power for a few minutes.

The bookstore shifts the conversation about preservation from old houses to things that are easy to mistake for unwanted paper.

The final stop will show how a dispute over the image of monastic life changed the temple, its name, and the structure of the order.

This stop explains how a place at the ancestral altar could become the outcome of a dynastic dispute several generations later.

Here the discussion of succession to the throne will move from the ceremonial hall into family rooms prepared for the birth of a child.

This is where the story begins of an alley that grew around one cheap snack.

Here, the court guard will leave the gates and become the service that controlled nighttime movement through the city.

This stop links a postwar repair district with Korean video art.

The finale will show how a former palace estate was divided into small houses and passageways for new owners.

The overall view of the neighborhood will explain where its small plots and dense rows of houses came from.

The alleys show why production is sustained not by a single workshop but by a neighborhood of specializations.