Hwaseong Fortress
— — a wall built for a father, in brick and stone.
Not only on a wall.
“The fortress that wraps the old town of Suwon, finished in 1796 by a king who never stopped grieving his father. Five and a half kilometres of wall, brick laid where stone would have been heavier, four great gates and forty-some watchtowers in between. The wall is a loop you can walk in an afternoon. People do, on cool evenings, with the lamps coming on.
Hwaseong Fortress, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Hwaseong sits around the old centre of Suwon, about 30 kilometres south of Seoul in Gyeonggi Province. King Jeongjo of Joseon ordered the fortress built between 1794 and 1796 as the seat of a planned new capital and as a memorial to his father, Crown Prince Sado. The young scholar-official Jeong Yak-yong designed the works, using pulleys and a crane of his own design to speed construction. The wall runs roughly 5.74 kilometres, with four main gates including Paldalmun and Janganmun. UNESCO listed it in 1997.
The wall is the first major Korean fortress built largely in brick rather than packed stone. Jeong Yak-yong studied Chinese and Western military manuals before drafting the design, and the result is a hybrid: granite footings, brick crenellations, stone gate frames. The brick let the builders shape the towers more freely, with arrow slits, curved bastions, and a single watchtower, Banghwasuyujeong, that leans out over a small lotus pond. Much of what stands today was rebuilt after the Korean War from the original construction record, the Hwaseong Seongyeok Uigwe of 1801.
The wall is open at all hours and free to walk. The most popular stretch runs from Paldalmun gate up over Paldal mountain and down to Hwaseomun, about an hour at a steady pace, with the city of Suwon spread out below. The Hwaseong Haenggung palace at the foot of the hill charges a small admission and hosts a daily changing-of-the-guard ceremony at the main gate. Late October is the easiest weather; summer in Gyeonggi runs humid. Suwon Station is on Seoul Metro Line 1, roughly an hour from the centre.