Suwon
— — a city that still walks its own wall.
Not only on a wall.
“The capital of Gyeonggi Province, ringed by Hwaseong Fortress: a five-and-a-half-kilometre stone-and-brick circuit King Jeongjo raised between 1794 and 1796 to honour his father. Four gates, two floodgates, four watchtowers, the long wall climbing Paldalsan and dropping back to the Suwoncheon stream. UNESCO listed it in 1997. The city grew around the wall instead of replacing it.
Suwon, 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.
Suwon is the capital and largest city of Gyeonggi Province in South Korea, about thirty kilometres south of central Seoul and reached in roughly half an hour by the Seoul Subway Line 1 or the high-speed rail. The historic core sits at around thirty-eight metres elevation on the Suwoncheon stream, with Paldalsan rising to 143 metres on the western side. The city has a population of more than 1.2 million and is the home of Samsung Electronics' headquarters in the Yeongtong district. It is best known abroad for Hwaseong Fortress, which encloses the old town.
Hwaseong Fortress is the great work of late Joseon military architecture. King Jeongjo commissioned it between 1794 and 1796 in memory of his father, Crown Prince Sado, integrating Korean, Chinese, and Western fortification ideas. The wall runs about 5.7 kilometres around the old city and includes four main gates, four watchtowers, two floodgates over the Suwoncheon, and forty-eight surviving structures of an original forty-eight. The polymath Jeong Yak-yong designed pulleys and cranes that completed the work in less than three years. UNESCO inscribed it on the World Heritage List in 1997.
The fortress wall is open at all hours and the full circuit is free to walk; it takes about two and a half hours at a steady pace, with steeper climbs over Paldalsan. The Hwaseong Haenggung royal palace, just inside Janganmun Gate, opens daily and charges a small admission. Trains from Seoul Station reach Suwon Station in about thirty-five minutes on Line 1 or fifteen minutes on KTX high-speed rail. Spring cherry blossoms along the wall peak in early April; autumn colour holds through late October.