You Can See The Oldest Astronomical Observatory of The World in Gyeongju, Korea

There are uncountable relics in Shilla dynasty.
Among them One of the representative relic of Shilla dynasty is Cheomseongdae(첨성대, 瞻星臺) which means the place for watching Stars.

Cheomseongdae was built in mid of 7th century AD.
It is the oldest astronomical observatory in the World which have been existed until now.

I was a kid when I saw this architecture first. I found the photo of Cheomseongdae taken in the honeymoon trip of my parents. It was a B/W photo.
The Cheomseongdae stood behind of my parents in the photo.

Some times this photos make me smile. My parents in Photos look younger than me.

Life is continuous process of taking a birth, growing, getting older and dying.
My father passed away 2 years ago, but he is still smiling on the Photo.

When I was a small kid, I asked my mom what was this architecture.
I still remember my mom explained that was the oldest astronomical architecture in the world patting me on my head.

So When I have visited Gyeongju, Cheomseongdae was the first priority whereI should visit.
In this visit, I was taking photos from far away.

Cheomseondae is very mysterious architecture, especially it’s appearance always make me curious.

Why did they make the astronomical observatory like that.

The bottom and the roof are quadrilateral, and body is rounding appearance.

I estimated the reason as below.

The bottom of quadrilateral means the earth.
The body means the sky.

It is believed that ancient people thought the earth of qardrilateral, and the sky of round.
(天圓地方)

This kinds of thought believed to be originated from ancient people who had lived in northern area ( central Asia now days)

Ancient Koreans seemed to have had very close relations with northern civilization.

In my opinion, Cheomseondae looks like an evidence of that relation.

Some scholars argued that the quadrilateral appearance of the roof could be the negative evidence against the theory of Sky round Earth quadrilateral.

But in my opinion, the quadrilateral roof looks like a scale to watch the movement of the heavenly bodies.

Besides the window could be the part of that mission.

Cheomseongdae could’ve played the role of the clock.

In the ancient world, the astronomy was the most important work of King in East Asia.

Cheomseongdae has 30 stories of the stone bricks from the foundation.
This thirty stories are believed as 1 month in Lunar calendar.

The fact that Cheomseongdae have lasted for such a long time without any damage, because the earthquake in this area have been so often occurred through history.

Of course, the appearance is not perfect now days.

It is having been damaged little by little due to the several reasons such as the earthquakes.

Specialists had checked up whether the architecture was OK.
Fortunately they say there is no problem until now.

But it seems that something not so good is undergoing in my eyes.

Any way this the oldest astronomical observatory is really beautiful by itself.

Thank you for reading