Gyeongju

Gyeongju National Park was declared in 1968 in North Gyeongsang province and is the only Korean national park of a historical character. It does not protect a continuous massif but a group of sectors around the city of Gyeongju, which for almost a thousand years was the capital of the kingdom of Silla and one of the great urban centres of the ancient world.

The most important of those sectors is Mount Namsan, a granite mountain of modest height whose slopes are strewn with hundreds of Buddhist remains: pagodas, Buddha statues carved into the rock, reliefs, temple foundations and tombs, accumulated over centuries until the whole mountain became an open-air sanctuary. Other sectors include Mount Toham, where the temple of Bulguksa and the Seokguram grotto stand, and the burial mounds and palace precincts of the plain.

The natural landscape is that of Korean temperate forest, with red pines, oaks and maples that produce a much-celebrated autumn colouring, and streams and valleys that have always shaped where temples and hermitages were placed. That fusion of mountain, forest and built heritage is the park's reason for being: at Gyeongju, conserving nature and conserving the archaeological legacy are inseparable.