Dynastic History|Hwangnyongsa Temple Site — Nine Storeys and the Claim in Them

Ground was broken in 553 for a new palace, and when a yellow dragon was reported on the site the court made it a temple instead — Silla's own account of the decision, and of the name 皇龍寺 that followed. Work ran across four reigns: the enclosure by 569, the great image in 574, the main hall in 584. The nine-storey wooden pagoda was finished in 645, in Queen Seondeok's reign, after the monk Jajang returned from Tang China pressing for it. A Baekje master named Abiji directed the carpentry; the official Yongchun supervised two hundred artisans. By the traditional reckoning the tower stood some 225 ch'ŏk, about 80 m.

The 三國遺事, compiled in the 1280s, records that each storey stood for the subduing of a named neighbouring people. That is a thirteenth-century compilation reporting a seventh-century court's ambitions — best read as what Silla wanted the building to say, not as instructions given to its carpenters. Lightning brought the pagoda down more than once and it was rebuilt more than once, most thoroughly in King Gyeongmun's reign in the 870s. In 1238, during the Mongol invasions, the whole complex burned.

Excavation ran for eight years, from 1976 to December 1983, and recovered some forty thousand objects from a precinct measuring roughly 288 by 281 m. What stands there now is a field: foundation stones in the grass, the pagoda's base a grid of blocks, the hills of Gyeongju behind it.

📸 Cover: the temple site, foundation stones on open ground — Abasaa, 2016, public domain via Wikimedia Commons.