Seoul for The Romantics: a Friday-to-Monday weekend

The curving lane along the palace wall where the ginkgos turn first; the city says couples who walk it part, which the couples walking it plainly do not believe.

Admission is free and the entrance is the 1928 Supreme Court façade, kept as a portico in front of the new galleries, where the old trial rooms once stood.

Korean dishes in the narrow lanes of Ikseon-dong, among low hanok roofs and lanterns. Order a pajeon to share and a bottle of makgeolli, and take the walk home slowly.

Book the first timed entry to the rear garden and stand at Buyongji pond while Juhamnu, the royal library pavilion, is still reflected unbroken.

A disused water-pressure station at the foot of Inwangsan turned into a quiet hall for the poet of 'Counting the Stars'; the hill path behind it is the best walk in Seochon.

Walk Bukchon-ro 11-gil as the tiled roofs go blue over Gyeongbokgung, then sit down to Tony Yoo's slow Korean tasting menu in a hanok with the lights kept low.

King Seongjong and King Jungjong lie under grass mounds in a pine wood that the Gangnam towers stand round like a fence.

A gisaeng house given to the Buddhists in 1997 by its owner Kim Young-han, who had loved the poet Baek Seok for fifty years; the valley garden is Seoul's quietest.

Knife-cut noodles in a clear beef broth and plump mandu in a quiet hanok, the plain end to a day of pines and poets; walk back down through Bukchon.

The smallest palace, with a white Victorian conservatory the Japanese built on its grounds in 1909; the loveliest odd building in Seoul, with the palace woods behind it.

Climb the restored wall past Ihwa-dong's stair murals for the last long look over the roofs of Jongno and the palaces below.

A bowl of chicken-broth noodles and a plate of suyuk in a Daehangno institution, eaten slowly before the airport train.