Gyeongju National Museum

Gyeongju was the capital of the Silla kingdom for almost a thousand years, from the first century BC to the tenth century AD, and the whole city is a museum of tombs, temple sites and stone pagodas. The Gyeongju National Museum is where the finds from all of that come together. It began in 1913 as a local antiquarian society, became a branch of the national museum in 1945 and moved to its present campus in 1975, on the southeastern edge of the old city, next to the Wolji pond and a short walk from the royal tumuli.

The campus is a group of low buildings around a wide lawn. The Silla History Gallery holds the gold crowns, belts, jewellery and horse trappings from the great mound tombs of the fifth and sixth centuries. The Silla Art Gallery is devoted to Buddhist sculpture and temple architecture, from gilt-bronze figures to stone pagoda fragments. The Wolji Gallery shows the thirty thousand objects dredged from the palace pond in 1975, and the outdoor exhibition spreads stone pagodas, lanterns and Buddhas across the grounds. Standing under its own pavilion is the Divine Bell of King Seongdeok, the largest surviving bell in Korea.

Allow half a day. The galleries are well labelled in English, the grounds are pleasant in all seasons, and the museum is the best possible preparation for the tombs, the Bulguksa temple and the Seokguram grotto that lie beyond it.