Advertisement
Published: September 15th 2012
Edit Blog Post
Silla Tombs
in Noseo park Before the oh-so-talked-of Joseon dynasty, there was the Silla ("Shilla") dynasty. A small collection of clans and peoples on Korea's South West coast that banded together and expanded between around 70 BC and 1000 AD. And their capital was Gyeongju. The (small) city was earmarked early on as culturally important in Korean history and has been carefully (one might almost say obsessively) kept very traditional.
Former President, Park Chung-Hee (fun fact - assassinated father of the current Presidential candidate Park) used quite draconian measures - prescribing that there were to be no buildings above a certain height, imposing strict planning permission conditions and requiring all roof to be the traditional Korean tiled roof. This has meant that, while the city has remained highly traditional - and you can actually look around you to the mountains surrouding it - much of the city is quite disorganised (what town planning?) and undeveloped. So you'll be walking through the city centre but get the impression that you're walking down a country lane. Strange. Also, it means that even petrol stations with their glorious plastic neon roofs are topped by cute traditional sloping tiles. Highly amusing.
Since half the day was spent faffing
about with trains and accommodation - thanks to my Swiss friend's recommendation, I am staying at the nicest hostel in the world! clean, quite spacious, breakfast included and a great owner who speaks perfect English (and who rescued me when I got lost trying to find the place) - I only had the late afternoon and early evening for my explorations.
I had read before arriving that Gyeongju ("gong-jew", hard "g" and "j") is famous for its burial mounds. But I wasn't prepared for the sheer number of barrows and the fact that they are HUGE and casually dotted around the city. Think Sutton Woo multiplied by 20.
Sadly, you can't enter most of them, so it's a case of walking past thinking "oh, what an attractive hillock". However, in the very centre of the city there are two particularly imporant (royal) tombs, one of which is open to the public. The tomb is called Cheonmachong, which means "tomb of the heavenly horse". Indeed, one of the (600 or so) artefacts found on site was a leather mud guard (which hung below the saddle, next to the stirrup) picturing the image of a flying horse.
Inside the
tomb, they have included certain artefacts in cabinets that run around the walls, and a central display to show how the body was positioned. The tomb itself is about one and a half times as high as your average ceiling, so plenty of space to send the king (as yet unidentified) into the afterlife with adequate pomp.
Moving on from the central tomb complex, I headed for Cheomseongdae ("chom-song-deh"), the observatory tower, which looks nothing so much like a rook from a chess board. I was less than wowed, but I have since been told that I need to see it at night when it's all prettily lit up.
I wandered some more just to see a bit of the town before heading back to the hostel to stay up past midnight chatting with my host and my two Korean roommates (who, sadly, were due to leave the next day). Apparently Uno really is an international game, and apparently I still suck at it even from the other side of the world...
Advertisement
Tot: 0.117s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 8; qc: 57; dbt: 0.0779s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb