Day 2. Touring the Imperial Palaces of Seoul
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On day 2 we headed to the 2 imperial palaces:
the “grand one” and the “beautiful one”.
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Above and in the middle, you see the “grand palace” entrance gate.
The gates
have ornate carved wooden roofs, which you can see below. |
Here you see our little international group (Germany,
France-Canada, Bulgaria-Canada and our beautiful Korean guide). |
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The palace has outer and inner walls. The
emperor procession was moving on the stone paved stripe in the middle. The
middle part of the path (where the two men walk on the left) is raised. Only
the emperor and his wife could walk there. |
Now tourists reign and walk the “emperor’s walk”.
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The
courtyard. At processions, this part was filled with court clerks and
military officers. |
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Ruddi explains to our guide (with strong
French accent) how to improve her English (i.e. to free it from the Korean
accent). |
Due
to the clash of accents we didn’t understand the purpose of these columns. I
think it was purely decorative. |
Unfortunately,
the main building of the imperial palace was closed for renovation. There was
a kind explanation (with picture) showing what it was supposed to look like
when finished.
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Korean school kids on a tour taking notes.
Those who had the cold wear masks!!!
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Well, the throne hall will be really nice once
when it is ready! |
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Through this door (sorry, turn your head
left), we left the official part and entered the residential part of the palace.
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This is the residential courtyard. The lesson
we learned yesterday when visiting the folk village applies here too:
separate houses for men and women!
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I
can’t remember if this was the men’s or the women’s house! But they were all
beautiful. The women in the palace (the wife and the hundreds of concubines
and female servants, who were also kind of wives to the emperor, but without
the rights of the concubines) could never leave this courtyard. They were
carried out only dead to be buried outside of the palace. You can imagine
that this courtyard must have been very crowded, when you think about all these
women and their children. The numerous children of the emperor had to leave the
courtyard when they grew up. They enjoyed very little privilege - were given
houses around the palace to live there. In this way, the city grew from “within” J |
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If you want to have yourself pictured in a
traditional Korean dress, you can! But it costs…
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The figures on the roof-edge were believed to
protect the house from fire (old Chinese belief). |
A group of tourists, in the background you
can see a Buddhist monk in orange gown. |
And
three more monks, with differently colored gowns. |
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Korean high school girls in Scottish-looking
uniforms. |
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We are leaving the courtyard, on the way to the
history museum. |
Pagoda on the way, I missed the explanation,
while making the pictures L |
What follows is a set of pictures taken as I walked through the history museum. We had exactly 15 minutes to run through a huge exposition, so I had no time to see anything in detail. I saw the things through the camera, taking busily picture after picture. Luckily my hidden camera in my SONY Picturebook did not draw attention, for I am pretty sure making pictures was not allowed. |
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