1 destination · 28 things to do

South Korea

Seoul is the rare capital where a six-hundred-year-old palace, a street-food alley older than the Korean War, a Zaha Hadid spaceship and one of the tallest towers on earth all sit on one subway map, and where the city still runs on fried chicken, late nights and the soundtrack of K-pop. Gyeongbokgung's throne halls fill with visitors in rented hanbok, who walk in free; the Huwon Secret Garden of Changdeokgung opens only to small guided groups; Bukchon's tiled hanok rooftops look down on Insadong's tea houses; Gwangjang Market's mung-bean pancakes sizzle under a century-old roof; N Seoul Tower crowns Namsan, and Lotte World Tower's Seoul Sky looks down 500 meters from a glass floor. This guide books the city properly — the palace closing days (Gyeongbokgung on Tuesdays, Changdeokgung on Mondays), the Secret Garden's limited English tours, Bukchon's 5pm curfew for visitors, what a DMZ tour can and cannot show you now that the JSA is closed to ordinary visitors, and why the Blue House is off the itinerary again — and pairs it with the free Seoul locals love: picnics and convenience-store ramyeon along the Han River, Hongdae's buskers, Myeongdong's evening food carts and the National Museum's five thousand years of treasures. Then it matches you to the right hotel, from a Gwanghwamun palace-district base and a Namsan resort with an outdoor pool to a suite in the clouds of the Lotte World Tower and a rooftop-pool lifestyle hotel in Hongdae, because in a city this spread out where you sleep decides which Seoul you see.