Buddhism, Crafts, and Old Jongno: A Day Around Jogyesa Temple

Old Jongno rewards a single day on foot more than almost any other district in Seoul: a working Buddhist head temple, a car-free crafts street, a spiral-ramp workshop mall, a National Treasure pagoda, a preserved hanok alley, and a floodlit urban stream all sit within roughly a twenty-minute walk of each other. Two recent events explain why this particular stretch of 2026 is a good moment to go. Since July 10, 2026, the Seoul Facilities Corporation has run an eco-material exhibition, “Adding and Subtracting in Daily Life for the Ecological Environment,” at the Cheonggyecheon Shantytown Theme Zone — 14 works by 12 artists produced with Hongik University’s Metal Sculpture Design Department, open Tuesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., closed Mondays. And earlier in the year, from March 4 to 15, Jongno District let visitors step inside the glass enclosure around Tapgol Park’s ten-story stone pagoda for the first time since that enclosure went up in 1999 — a sign that this neighborhood’s oldest monuments occasionally get short, unannounced-feeling windows of closer access.

Neither event is required to enjoy the walk below, which works as a self-contained loop on any day of the year.

Jogyesa: Seoul’s Head Temple of Buddhism

Jogyesa functions as the administrative and spiritual center of Korean Buddhism, not just a temple visitors pass through. Founded in 1910 under the name Gakhwangsa and renamed Jogyesa in 1954, it is the head temple of the Jogye Order, Korea’s largest Buddhist denomination, at 55 Ujeongguk-ro in central Jongno-gu. Its main worship hall, the Daeungjeon, was completed in 1938 and is what most visitors photograph — a reminder that even Seoul’s most visible Buddhist landmark is, in its current form, a 20th-century building sitting on a much older tradition. Robed monks moving between buildings, incense smoke, and visitors bowing at the hall’s threshold are constants here regardless of season.

Insadong’s Car-Free Culture Street

Walk east from Jogyesa and the crowd changes character almost immediately — fewer monks, more shoppers browsing calligraphy brushes, celadon pottery, and tea sets. Insadong-gil was designated Seoul’s first official Culture District on April 24, 2002, and its main street has closed to vehicle traffic on Saturdays and Sundays since April 13, 1997. Visit on a weekend if a traffic-free street matters to your plans; on weekdays, Insadong-gil carries normal car traffic.

Analysis: For a US visitor, Insadong-gil reads less like a shopping street and more like a walkable antiques-and-gallery district — small dealers and studio-style shops built for browsing on foot, closer in spirit to a gallery row than to a mall.

Ssamziegil: A Spiral of Craft Workshops

Insadong-gil’s most distinctive building is Ssamziegil, a complex built around a continuous spiral ramp that climbs from ground level to the roof without a single staircase. Small hands-on workshops line that ramp — soap-making, terrarium-building, and bracelet-making among them — and visitors can book a session on-site or through reservation apps. Walking the ramp and browsing the shops costs nothing; only the workshops themselves carry a fee.

Analysis: For anyone tired of shelf souvenirs, making a piece by hand here is a more memorable way to bring the neighborhood home than buying one ready-made — the same appeal as a pottery-painting studio or a candle bar back in the US, just wrapped around a spiral ramp instead of a storefront.

Tapgol Park and the Ten-Story Pagoda’s Rare March Opening

A five-minute walk from Insadong-gil, Tapgol Park holds the Wongaksa-ji Ten-Story Stone Pagoda, designated National Treasure No. 2 on December 20, 1962. Completed in 1467 under King Sejo, the roughly 12-meter pagoda is carved from marble rather than the granite typical of most Korean stone pagodas — part of why it has stood inside a protective glass enclosure since 1999. From March 4 to 15, 2026, Jongno District opened that enclosure’s interior to the public for close-up viewing, the first time the inside had been accessible since the glass went up, with free admission booked through Seoul’s official public reservation site. That window has since closed, and the pagoda is back to being viewed from outside the glass — still worth the stop, and a concrete example of how Jongno occasionally opens closer access to its oldest monuments for a matter of days before closing it again.

Ikseon-dong’s Century-Old Hanok Alleys

North of Tapgol Park, Ikseon-dong is Seoul’s smallest and densest hanok neighborhood: 118 traditional houses built before the 1930s, packed onto lots that developer Jeong Se-gwon originally subdivided and sold to Korean families during the colonial period. Seoul designated it a protected hanok-concentrated area in 2018, locking in the low tiled roofs and narrow alleys even as cafes and boutiques have moved into the houses themselves. The lots here run noticeably smaller than in the better-known Bukchon Hanok Village, which makes the alleys feel more like a maze than a museum district.

An Evening Walk Along Cheonggyecheon

End the day at Cheonggyecheon, the restored stream running along Jongno’s southern edge. Eleven stretches of its walking paths have nighttime landscape lighting installed, and the stream corridor stays open 24 hours a day, year-round and free — no ticket, no closing time, no reservation.

Analysis: The closest US comparison is the River Walk in San Antonio — a below-street-level water corridor that turns a downtown into somewhere people stroll after dinner instead of driving past. Cheonggyecheon is narrower and more purely pedestrian, with no boats or restaurant patios at the water’s edge, but the basic instinct — sink a walking path below the street grid and light it at night — is the same one.

Practical: Jogyesa, Insadong-gil, Ssamziegil, Tapgol Park, and Ikseon-dong sit close enough together that the walk between them is flat and easy, and Cheonggyecheon is a short walk further south — the whole route works as a single-day loop without a car or a subway transfer between stops.