Nakwon Arcade
낙원상가
Mixed-use megastructure · Disputed · c. 1969 · Jongno-gu
Address: 서울 종로구 삼일대로 428
A late-1960s megastructure built straight over a road: cars drive through the ground floor, a market sits underneath, the middle floors are Seoul's best-known musical-instrument market, an old cinema and a rooftop yard sit above, and apartments around a vertical courtyard fill the top. A rare surviving piece of Seoul's 'one building, a whole city' experiments from that era.
Getting in: Instrument shops open daily except some Sundays; walk up through the arcade floors. 3 minutes from Jongno 3-ga Station.
A lesser-known building that architecture fans seek out; facts from the pages under Sources, summary written by us.