Even though the whole world knows about the South Korean city of Suwon because of the famous Korean football team «Suwon Samsung Bluewings» and the biggest innovation center of the Samsung Electronics company, the city has not only modern attractions. Lots of historical and cultural monuments are headed by the majestic defensive construction of the 18th century which is the Hwaseong Fortress. The name means «Brilliant Fortress» in Korean.

According to some data, King Jeongjo desired to move the capital of his state to Suwon, so he built a defensive fortress there. Others say that the King built the fort as a mausoleum for his father. However, nobody knows for sure what was the purpose of the fortress. We only know that its construction was designed by a famous architect Chŏng Yagyong and started in 1794.

The world-known fortress combines both Eastern and Western styles. That was uncommon for the Korean architecture of the 18th century. It has four main entrances that functioned as the city gates. The western and eastern gates crown the one-story pavilions while the northern and the southern crown the two-story ones. All of them are surrounded by small buildings which previously were the living places for guards. In total, there were 48 of the buildings, but due to the wars, fires and floods, today we can see only 41 of them.

Nowadays on the territory of the fortress, you can see weapons bastions and command posts, observation, guard and signal towers, platforms for guards and archers and even secret entrances. Strong defensive walls approximately 6 kilometers long and up to 6 meters high protect the huge territory of the fortress which occupies the area of 130 hectares. Only one of four defensive walls was destroyed during wars. The rest of the walls and inner fortress constructions can be visited today.