Utlandsstudier i Deutschland! (tidigare Sydkorea): Temples and castles of Korea

Staying in Korea for almost half a year allowed me to see many Korean temples and the main castles.All of them in all shapes and sizes, but most of them sharing common patterns and design.

When going to Asia visiting a temple must be high on the priority list, these places are as beautiful as they are mysterious. I really got a cool feeling being on these holy places and I really enjoyed going to so many of them.

I went to some castles as well, they strongly recembles the temples in shapes and colours.

범어사

Main castle in Seoul, the contrasts between megatropolis and old heritage could really be noticed inside the castle area.

Mainly buildings have the same colours and shapes but are somehow different, this is the guest room.

The cealing is extraordinary inside the buildings!

This is the animals from the Chinese zodiac belief, it was always fun seeing these guys! They hang around many holy places in Korea ;-)

This is where the original castle wall ended before the castle was burnt down by the Japanese, now it stands in the middle of a roundabout.

The stone formations in front of the building are called pagodas, they can be seen in all Asia and is said to have special religous meanings. Especially these ones in Gyeongyu have a great meaning, they are even printed on one of the Korean coins.

Putting stones in a pile is said to give luck

Very many of the castles and temples in Korea were burnt down and destroyed during Japanese colonization periods. This statue though is original and it is considered as one of the most beautiful buddha statues made of stone in the world, the hight of it is 3,5 m high and 1,4 m wide.

This is one old castle area, it has been partly restaurated but not fully, now it's just a park. The original castle occupied a much bigger area than this park.

Temples can be found almost everywhere, mostly in mountains and on beautiful places. Walking on a relatively random road along the coast of Busan I found a small temple.

This funny, looking like an Angry bird, fountain was found just outside the temple, maybe indicating of it's existance there

All buddhist temples has swastikas on it. It has many religious meanings but it usually used as a symbol for the sun. Even though it has a religous meaning it took a while getting used to see it everywhere, because it is everywhere bus stops, houses, temples etc.