Awaiting A Name

museum without walls

Gyeongju; ancient capital of the Shilla dynasty, modern day capital of UNESCO world cultural heritage. It’s plethora of tombs, palace sites, temples and statuary are scattered about the area, furnishing the city with both its name, ‘museum without walls’, and a healthy dose of tourism.

My favourite place was the park of ancient burial mounds. With the shining sun and pristine upkeep, it looked like teletubbies’ land.However, when you see the tombs in the wider landscape they seem to fit so perfectly with the mountains, they could have grown from the earth by themselves.The Heavenly Horse Tomb is open to the public, where you can see a cross-section inside and a reconstruction of the burial. Although there are replicas on show, the real items are now in the National Museum in Seoul.Nearby Cheomseongdae, over 9m tall, is the oldest astrological observatory in Asia. Gyeongju National Museum is a short walk away through flowery fields.

If you haven’t been to the National Museum in Seoul, then this is definitely a good alternative as it’s smaller and focuses on what was excavated in the local area. Despite all the glittering gold accessories, my favourites were the cartoon-like clay figurines.

Further out from the central area, are Buddhist relics galore. Bulguksa is famous for it’s Shilla architecture; poetically named Blue Cloud and White Cloud Bridges lead to the Mauve Mist Gate (background), along with Lotus Flower and Seven Treasures Bridges (foregound).There’s also a golden pig which brings good fortune if you rub it (which reminds me of the bronze boar in Florence which also gave good luck when you touched its nose).Beautiful rock carvings can be seen at Seokguram grotto, high in the mountains. You can also drink healing spring water, which had a surprisingly tasty mineral flavor. No pictures were allowed inside (I suspect to encourage postcard buying) so here is one I nabbed from the net.On a smaller scale, there are Buddhist carvings all over the mountains. Walking up Namsan you can easily spot them.But the best thing I saw was neither Buddhist, nor indeed cultural heritage, but I deem them to be national treasures…a family of kitties (which is a rare sight in Korea)! There was shy kitty, who never came out from the hiding place…Sad kitty, who miaowed a lot……but who also played a lot too…And brave kitty who liked using claws…Mama cat slept the whole time.Papa cat was prowling round under parked cars, but after dark he came to sit with the rest of the family as we headed back to the hotel.