Changdeokgung and the secret garden
The palace the Joseon kings actually lived in, and the garden behind it they kept for themselves
Changdeokgung was built in 1405 as the second palace of the new Joseon capital, and for much of the dynasty it was the one the kings preferred to live in. Where Gyeongbokgung lays its halls out on a straight line, Changdeokgung lets them follow the folds of the hills, and behind it, filling the wooded valley to the north, lies the royal garden: ponds, pavilions and old trees, planted and built over four centuries for the court alone. The palace is on UNESCO's World Heritage List for that harmony with its land, and the garden is the reason most people come.
Go, and book the Secret Garden first. It is a separate ticket for a fixed entry time, with a hundred places a session, and half of them are sold online in advance. Choose a morning slot, spend the hour before it in the palace buildings, and give the garden as long as your ticket allows. Avoid Mondays, when everything is closed, and expect the autumn slots to go first.
How this page was madeWe have not yet been to South Korea. With Japan, it is one of the two places at the top of our list, and this guide is researched rather than remembered: from the Korea Heritage Service, which runs the palace, UNESCO and published guides, checked on the date below. When we go, we will say so here.
Last updated 27 September 2026
Why it matters
Changdeokgung was meant to be the lesser palace. King Taejong built it in 1405 as a secondary residence to Gyeongbokgung, and the garden behind it was laid out the following year and enlarged in 1463. But the kings liked it better. When both palaces burned in the Japanese invasions of 1592, Changdeokgung was the first to be rebuilt, in 1610, and for the next 270 years, until Gyeongbokgung was restored in 1867, it was the king's main residence and the working centre of the court.
It is the way it was built that sets it apart. The Korea Heritage Service calls it the most Korean-style of the palaces: instead of levelling the site into a grid, its builders let the halls, courtyards and gates follow the slopes and valleys of the land, and they left the hills behind it wooded. UNESCO inscribed it in 1997 for exactly that, describing a palace that blends with its landscape rather than dominating it, and a garden cleverly adapted to uneven ground, with more than 56,000 trees and plants.
Kings added to it for centuries. The Ongnyucheon stream, the royal library of Gyujanggak, the Juhamnu pavilion, the Aeryeonji pond and the Yeongyeongdang residence were all built between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, and the Nakseonjae quarter followed in 1847. Changdeokgung and its neighbour Changgyeonggung had no wall between them and were known together as the East Palace.
The garden has had several names. Officially it was the Huwon, the rear garden, and it is also called Biwon, the secret garden, because it was closed to all but the royal family and those they invited. For most of its history almost no one outside the court saw it, and entry is still rationed today, now by ticket rather than by rank.
It is also where the dynasty ended. The last emperor, Sunjong, lived and died here, and the treaty by which Japan annexed Korea in 1910 was signed in Heungbokheon, a small building beside his quarters. The last members of the royal family lived out their lives in Nakseonjae. That is part of what gives the palace its quiet: it was lived in, and it saw the end.
What it's like
You enter through Donhwamun, the main gate, from the busy street outside, and almost at once the palace turns. The route to the throne hall bends to the right over a stone bridge, because the ground would not allow a straight approach, and that bend is the first sign of how different this place is. The throne hall, Injeongjeon, stands in its courtyard with the wooded hill rising behind it, and the offices, halls and residences beyond it spread across the slope in no fixed order, joined by gates and walls.
East of the formal halls, Nakseonjae is plain unpainted timber, built for a royal concubine and later home to the last of the royal family; after the painted halls, its bare wood and paper feel domestic. From here, or from the palace courtyards, the paths lead north to the garden gate.
The Secret Garden, Huwon, is not a garden in the European sense. There are no lawns or flowerbeds. It is a wooded valley, walked on paths that climb and fall between old trees, with pavilions, ponds and small halls placed where the land opens. The trees close overhead soon after the gate, and the city is out of sight.
The garden route links four main openings in the woods, each a little farther from the palace and a little plainer than the last.
| Stop | What it is | What to notice |
|---|---|---|
| Buyongji and Juhamnu | A square pond with a small round island, and above it a two-storey pavilion that housed the royal library | The pavilion and its trees reflected in still water |
| Aeryeonji | A smaller lotus pond with a pavilion, entered through Bullomun, a gate cut from a single block of stone | The gate's name, which wishes long life to all who pass through it |
| Yeongyeongdang | A residence built in the style of a scholar's house rather than a palace | Bare, unpainted timber after the coloured halls |
| Ongnyucheon | A stream channelled over a sheet of carved rock, with small pavilions and an inscription | The water on the stone, at the farthest point of the route |
When your entry time lets you go at your own pace, stop at Buyongji and let the others walk on. It is a square pond with a small round island, edged in stone. Stand at the water and wait for it to settle. Find the pavilion on the slope above in the reflection, and the trees behind it. Listen for what fills the space the voices leave: leaves, water, a bird. The kings came up here to read. Give it the time a page would take.
The garden changes with the seasons more than any other part of Seoul's palaces. In spring the trees come into leaf and flower; in summer the lotus fills Buyongji and the shade is welcome; in autumn the maples turn, and the garden is at its most famous and its most booked; in winter it is bare and quiet, and the slots are easiest to find.
How to visit
The palace ticket covers the palace buildings only. The Secret Garden needs a second ticket for a fixed entry time, and the palace ticket must be bought as well. Each session admits 100 people: 50 tickets are sold online in advance and 50 at the ticket office on the day, first come, first served. Arrive late and you will not be admitted, and the ticket is not refunded.
Tickets
The palace costs ₩3,000 for adults aged 19 to 64, and is free for anyone aged 18 or under or 65 or over, for anyone wearing hanbok, and for everyone on Culture Day, the last Wednesday of each month. The Secret Garden costs ₩5,000 for adults and for over-65s, and ₩2,500 for young people aged 7 to 18, on top of the palace ticket where it applies. Free palace entry, in hanbok or otherwise, does not make the garden free, and discounts need identification.
The Royal Palace Pass, ₩6,000, covers the palace buildings here along with Gyeongbokgung, Changgyeonggung, Deoksugung and Jongmyo Shrine, but not the Secret Garden. The Korea Heritage Service's own pages disagree on how long the pass is valid, three months on one and six months on another, so check at the ticket office before relying on it for a longer trip.
Booking the Secret Garden
Online tickets are sold through the palaces' official reservation site, which has an English version. Published guides say each day's online places are released six days ahead, at 10am Korean time, and that English-language slots and autumn dates sell out first; the official page says only that half the places are sold online. If you miss out online, come to the ticket office early on the day for the on-site half.
Hours
Everything is closed on Mondays; when a public holiday falls on a Monday the palace opens and closes the next day instead. Hours differ between the palace and the garden, and by season.
| Area | Months | Open | Last entry |
|---|---|---|---|
| Palace buildings | February–May, September–October | 9am–6pm | 5pm |
| Palace buildings | June–August | 9am–6.30pm | 5.30pm |
| Palace buildings | November–January | 9am–5.30pm | 4.30pm |
| Secret Garden | March–June, September–October | 10am–5.30pm | 4pm |
| Secret Garden | July–August | 10am–5.10pm | 4pm |
| Secret Garden | November | 10am–5pm | 3.30pm |
| Secret Garden | December–February | 10am–4.10pm | 3pm |
With a guide, or on your own
The Korea Heritage Service now says that entry to the Secret Garden is at the time on your ticket and that the guided tour is optional; many older guides, and some recent ones, still say you can only see it on a tour. We follow the official wording, and suggest you check it at the ticket office on the day. Free English tours of the garden start at its entrance at 10.30am, 11.30am, 2.30pm and, from March to November, 3.30pm; tours of the palace buildings leave from the main information board at 10.15am and 1.15pm. Recording the guides is not allowed without their permission.
Getting there
Take Line 3 to Anguk Station and walk five minutes from Exit 3 to Donhwamun, the main gate. From Jongno 3-ga Station, on Lines 1, 3 and 5, Exit 7 is a ten-minute walk.
Changdeokgung lies east of Bukchon and north of Jongno, with Donhwamun on Yulgok-ro at its south-western corner. The palace buildings fill the southern part of the grounds; the Secret Garden takes up the wooded valley to the north, entered by its own gate. Changgyeonggung adjoins it to the east, and Jongmyo Shrine lies to the south across Yulgok-ro.
Night visits
In spring and autumn the palace runs evening tours by lantern light, which sell out quickly. They are booked separately from daytime tickets, and dates and prices change each season, so look for them on the reservation site if you are there in those months.
Access and facilities
The palace buildings are on gentle ground, though gates have raised thresholds. The garden is a walk on slopes, earth paths and steps under trees, and needs reasonable mobility and shoes you can walk in.
Making the most of it
Book first, then plan the day around the slot
Everything follows from the garden ticket. Book it before anything else in your Seoul plans if you can, then fit the rest of the day around it: the palace buildings for an hour before your slot, and Bukchon, Insadong or Changgyeonggung afterwards.
Take a morning slot
An early slot gives you the garden before the day warms, and leaves the afternoon free. It also means that if you are buying on the day, you are at the ticket office when the on-site places are at their fullest.
Go the whole way
The ponds near the start of the garden are the famous pictures, and the paths beyond them are quieter. Ongnyucheon, in the far north, is the part most worth the walk: a stream channelled over carved rock among small pavilions, with an inscription cut into the stone.
Pick your season
Autumn is the most sought-after, and the hardest to book. Spring leaf and summer lotus are almost as good and easier to find places for. Winter is bare, cold and quiet, with the shortest hours, and on a clear day the buildings show through the trees in a way they never do in leaf.
Continue next door
Changgyeonggung, the neighbouring palace to the east, was part of the same royal compound, the East Palace, and has its own ticket. With Jongmyo Shrine to the south, it makes Changdeokgung the natural centre of a day spent on the eastern side of the old city.
Be a good guest
Stay on the paths in the garden, where the planting and the old trees are fragile, and keep voices down at the ponds, where the quiet is the point. You may photograph freely, but the palace asks that you do not record or stream the guides without their permission. If you visit in hanbok, allow for slopes and steps in a long skirt, and remember that it earns free entry to the palace but not to the garden.
Nearby
West of the palace, the hanok lanes of Bukchon climb the ridge towards Gyeongbokgung, the grander main palace, a 20-minute walk away. South of Anguk Station, Insadong is the place for lunch, tea and craft shops. Changgyeonggung adjoins the palace to the east, and Jongmyo Shrine, the dynasty's ancestral shrine, lies across Yulgok-ro to the south. From the old centre, the 01A bus runs up Namsan to N Seoul Tower for the view at dusk. For the rest of the city, start with our Seoul guide.
A final word on Changdeokgung
Gyeongbokgung shows you the kingdom as it wished to be seen. Changdeokgung shows you where its kings chose to live, and the garden they kept to themselves. Book the garden, arrive early, and at the first pond let the group walk on. It is near the top of our own list, and this is how we mean to see it.
Andrew + Margaret
- Seoul Overview
- Gyeongbokgung Palace Highlight
- Bukchon Hanok Village Highlight
- Insadong Highlight
- Where to stay in Seoul Decide
- Korean etiquette Culture
Do you need to book the Secret Garden in advance?
It is strongly advised. Each entry session admits 100 people: 50 tickets are sold online in advance through the official reservation site and 50 at the ticket office on the day. English-language slots and autumn dates go first. Checked September 2026.
Can you see the Secret Garden without a tour?
The Korea Heritage Service now says entry is at the time on your ticket and that the guided tour is optional, although many guides still describe it as tour-only; check at the ticket office on the day. The palace buildings can always be explored on your own.
How much does Changdeokgung cost?
The palace is ₩3,000 for adults and free for those aged 18 and under, 65 and over, or wearing hanbok. The Secret Garden is a separate ₩5,000 ticket for adults and over-65s, ₩2,500 for ages 7 to 18. The ₩6,000 Royal Palace Pass does not include the garden.
What day is Changdeokgung closed?
Mondays. When a public holiday falls on a Monday, it opens that day and closes the next. The palace opens at 9am and the Secret Garden at 10am, with closing times that vary by season.