I finally made it to the Changdeok Palace (Changdeokgung) for a visit after having been to Seoul so many times. It’s pretty worth a visit especially together with the tour of the Secret Garden.

The Changdeok Palace is also a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site and from the little that I remembered from what the tour guide said during the free English guided tour, the last King and Queen of the Joeseon Dynasty lived there till they died in the early 1990s… (I hope I remembered the year right).

I suck badly at History and while I marvel and am amazed by History, I usually don’t retain much historical information. And in the rare event that I do, I usually get some part of the fact wrong as well. LOL. True story. That’s why I never continued History past lower secondary.

Anyway, that said, enjoy the pictures:

Take note that there are only 2 or 3 English guided tours a day so please check for the timings before you head over to the place. You are free to roam around the Changdeok Palace without a guided tour but the Secret Garden (Huwon) requires you to join a guided tour at a fixed timing. You can click here to check the timings of the guided tours in various languages.

In case you were wondering, there is nothing secret in the garden, it’s just referred to as the Secret Garden because it used to be a garden that was accessible only to the King and Queen and selected special guests of the King and Queen. The commoners were always curious about the garden and speculated about it hence they referred to it as the “Secret Garden”.