Suwon Hwaseong Fortress

Janganmun Gate

The north gate, built in 1794. Its gatehouse was destroyed in the Korean War and rebuilt in 1975. A jar-shaped barbican stands outside it with a guard post to either side. With Paldalmun in the south, it is the grandest and highest-ranking structure on the wall.

Paldalmun Gate

Treasure 402, the south gate, built in 1794 and dismantled for repair in 2013. It matches Janganmun in scale and form: ground was broken on the same day, and each stage finished about a week behind.

Changnyongmun Gate

The east gate, built in 1795, its gatehouse destroyed in the Korean War and rebuilt in 1976. It sits where the wall folds inward, so the projecting stretches to either side shelter it without needing a barbican. A rank below Janganmun and Paldalmun: one storey, hipped-and-gabled.

Hwaseomun Gate

Treasure 403. The west gate, placed to the northwest because Paldalsan stands in the west. Open ground outside it is why the tall Seobuk Gongsimdon was raised alongside. Built in 1796 and little altered since, it shows the plain precision of eighteenth-century building.

Seobuk Gongsimdon

Treasure 1710. A gongsimdon is a hollow watchtower, and Hwaseong is the only Korean fortress that has one. Three brick storeys on a projecting bastion, a single-storey pavilion on top, gun ports through the outer wall. Touring the finished fortress in early 1797, King Jeongjo stopped here and said it was the first of its kind ever built in Korea and they should look their fill. Of the three, only this one survives as built.

Dongbuk Gongsimdon

The northeastern watchtower, and unlike its western counterpart it stands inside the wall. A three-storey brick cylinder whose passage spirals from the door up to the lookout, which earned it the nickname 'the conch tower'. Chae Je-gong climbed it in early 1797 and called the winding stair strange and ingenious. More than half of it fell in the Korean War; it was rebuilt in 1976.

Banghwasuryujeong (Northeast Pavilion)

Treasure 1709. A lookout on the fortress's northeastern key point, raised on the Yongdu rock to watch the ground and fire on it. It is a military structure that spent most of its life as a place to sit and look at the pond. Jeongjo read its other name, Banghwasuryujeong, as pointing at Hwasan, where his father's tomb lay, and Yucheon, where he had moved the town. The heated room that normally sits on a lookout's ground floor is here on the upper one, with windows, for the king.

Yongyeon Pond

The pond outside the north wall. It takes its name from the Yongdu — dragon's head — rock, and the pavilion on that rock is also called Yongdugak. When the pond overflows it drains west into the Suwoncheon through an outlet carved with an imugi, still in its original form. The moon rising in the water is one of the sights the fortress is measured by.

Hwahongmun (North Water Gate)

The water gate where the north wall meets the Suwoncheon: seven arches, a stone bridge over them, a pavilion on top of that. The pavilion was built to watch for an enemy and used, in practice, to sit in. Water breaking through the arches in spray is one of the sights the fortress is measured by.

Seojangdae (West Command Post)

The command post on the summit of Paldalsan, three bays a side below and one above, narrowing as it rises: the commander directed drill from the lower floor, sentries watched from the upper. Jeongjo held the military review here, and a painting of the 1795 one survives. The two boards under the upper eaves are the only ones in the fortress that Jeongjo both composed and wrote out.

Dongjangdae (Yeonmudae)

The other command post, also called Yeonmudae. Of the two, this was where the troops drilled day to day and Seojangdae was where drill was directed. The ground is terraced in three, with a ramp up the middle of the yard so the commander could ride up it. On 19 August 1796, as construction closed, some 2,700 overseers and labourers were fed here.

Bongdon (Beacon Tower)

The beacon tower. Beacons normally stood high and out of the way; this one was put on the open east side so it could be read directly from the palace. Wall, interior and stair are all brick, which makes it the fortress's showpiece in that material. Five fire-holes sit on the raised platform: one lit at the south end in ordinary times, more as the situation worsened, all five in war.