The Shilla Seoul Review: Seoul's Grande Dame
· By April Windsor
The Shilla has stood on the lower slope of Namsan, the hill in the middle of Seoul, since March 1979. It grew out of the government's own guest house for visiting heads of state, and it is Forbes five-star eight years running, one of only nine hotels in Korea holding a Michelin Key, and still, forty-seven years in, the one locals book when the occasion matters. Most guests reserve a room. The ones who have stayed before book an Executive room, because the best thing in the building is a room on the twenty-third floor that serves food three times a day.
THE HISTORY
Yeong Bin Gwan came first. The hotel dates it to 1967, built for official state functions and receptions for distinguished guests, which is a polite way of saying the government needed somewhere to put a visiting president. Lee Byung-chul, the founder of Samsung, took the state guest house over in 1973 and opened a hotel beside it in March 1979. He named it after Shilla, the kingdom that ruled most of the peninsula for close to three centuries. Its gold crowns and stone Buddhas are still what Korea puts on its posters. Yeong Bin Gwan is still standing in the garden and still in use, with an outdoor garden the hotel books at eight hundred seated or a thousand standing. Two floors of it are built in the Korean manner, tiled roofs and painted eaves, and in five years as the state guest house it took in close to forty heads of state. What it does now is weddings, and it is where Seoul's famous have theirs: Song Joong-ki and Song Hye-kyo married in the hall in October 2017 in front of two hundred and fifty guests, which tells you what the building still means here.
THE DESIGN
Very little of the 1979 interior survives. The Shilla shut for seven months and reopened on 1 August 2013 with rooms by Peter Remedios. He worked in leather, wood and dark marble and took out the smallest rooms, so the ones that remain are bigger, and the lobby and lounge stayed one double-height volume. The rooms were presented at the time as timeless modernism, a phrase that usually ages badly. Thirteen years on, they have not. Hanging over it since 2006 is a light sculpture by Bahk Seon-ghi, thousands of acrylic beads suspended in a cloud, which he rehangs in a new shape most years. Outside, a path climbs through the grounds past sculpture by Korean artists and out towards the old city wall. Walk it before breakfast.
THE LOUNGE
The Executive Lounge is on the twenty-third floor, the same floor as the hotel's two-star Korean restaurant, with Seoul laid out below the windows. The hotel calls it a luxurious penthouse reception room and that is close to right. It reads as a private drawing room rather than a corporate club, which is rarer than it sounds at this altitude.
It runs three services a day. Breakfast from 06:30, until ten on weekdays and half past at weekends and on public holidays. Afternoon tea from 15:30 to 17:00. Then happy hour from 18:00 right through to 22:00, which is longer than most hotels bother with, and after nine the kitchen narrows to alcohol, cheese and dessert. There is enough of it, and it is good enough, that you can treat the lounge as dinner and not feel you have cut a corner. The pastry is the giveaway: the Shilla sells its pastry to the city as well as to its guests, from a boutique off the lobby, and the tea trolley is the better for being in that building. We would put the food and drink on this floor among the best of any hotel lounge anywhere in the world.
This is our core element in aiming as the global luxury hotel.
One honest note. It is popular and it is not large, and at peak happy hour on a full weekend there can be a wait at the door. Go at six rather than eight. Children under thirteen are admitted only on weekend and holiday afternoons between noon and three, and from Monday to Thursday, public holidays excepted, you can bring in up to two guests who are not staying in the hotel, for a fee.
THE TABLE
La Yeon, on that same twenty-third floor, holds two Michelin stars in the current guide. Continental, the French room, is on the same floor, and opened with the hotel in 1979. Two floors above the lobby are Palsun for Chinese and Ariake for Japanese, with The Parkview doing the all-day room downstairs. The Library is the lobby lounge and bar, and off it there is a whisky room called The Distillers Library. Four of the restaurants are recognised in La Liste.
THE ROOMS
There are 464 rooms and suites. Lounge access comes with both Executive categories and with the suites, and the hotel sells it as a package, so check your rate carries it. The Executive Grand Deluxe is the one to take: fifty-three square metres on floors seven to twenty-two, sleeping two or three, facing either Namsan or the city. Ask for the city side and go as high as they will put you.
Downstairs there are two pools, the indoor one included and the outdoor one charged separately unless your rate covers it, with cabanas, open from late March to mid-November. There is also a gym, a sauna, an indoor golf range and a spa now run with Clé de Peau Beauté. The lounge on the twenty-third floor is thirteen and over, but the hotel has not simply left families to it. There is a Kids' Lounge on the fifth floor, free to anyone staying with young children, open from ten until seven with an hour off in the middle of the day, and an adult has to stay with them. It shuts on the third Wednesday of the month.
The Verdict
Book the Executive Grand Deluxe, take the lounge access, and plan two of your evenings around the twenty-third floor instead of a restaurant reservation. Go up at six rather than eight, eat properly, and let the hotel talk you out of the dinner you were going to book somewhere else.
Seoul has newer hotels and louder ones, and several of them are very good. What none of them has is the thing sitting in this garden. A hotel with a former state guest house on its grounds is not a design conceit, it is an accident of politics the Shilla has spent half a century living up to, and it shows in small places: a staff that does not hurry, a pastry counter that supplies the city, a kids' room on the fifth floor for the families the lounge upstairs will not take.
The case against is honest enough. You are a little away from the centre, the lounge fills up, and the outdoor pool costs extra unless your rate covers it. None of that is the reason to choose or refuse this hotel. The reason is that it has been the city's address for forty-seven years and still behaves like it, which is rarer than a new building and much harder to buy.
GETTING THERE
Dongguk University station on Line 3 sits at the bottom of the hill, exit 5, and the hotel runs its own shuttle to it all day, along with routes to Myeongdong and to Dongdaemun. Incheon is about an hour and a half by taxi and nearer two by the 6702 airport bus, which stops at Jangchung Gymnasium around the corner. Gimpo is about an hour by taxi. The hotel will arrange a private transfer if you ask, and it will send a car down to the car park or the bus stop to collect you if you call ten minutes out. The hotel is at 249 Dongho-ro in Jung-gu, which puts you a short ride from Dongdaemun one way and Myeongdong the other, and on the quiet side of both.
The Details The Shilla Seoul 249 Dongho-ro, Jung-gu, Seoul, South Korea +82-2-2233-3131 Opened: 8 March 1979; Yeong Bin Gwan, the former state guest house in the grounds, dates to 1967 Rooms: 464 rooms and suites; Executive Grand Deluxe 53㎡ on floors 7 to 22 with Executive Lounge access The lounge: Floor 23. Breakfast 06:30–10:00 weekdays, 06:30–10:30 weekends and holidays; afternoon tea 15:30–17:00; happy hour 18:00–22:00 daily Dining: La Yeon (Korean, two Michelin stars), Palsun (Chinese), Ariake (Japanese), Continental (French), The Parkview (all day), The Library, The Distillers Library, Pastry Boutique Facilities: Indoor and outdoor pools, Clé de Peau Beauté Spa, gym, sauna, indoor golf range, Kids' Lounge (Floor 5, daily 10:00–19:00, free for guests with young children), duty-free, walking and jogging courses Recognition: The Leading Hotels of the World; Forbes Travel Guide Five Star for eight consecutive years; One MICHELIN Key, 2026 Korea selection Getting there: Line 3 Dongguk University station exit 5; about 1h30 from Incheon by taxi, 2 hours on the 6702 airport bus; about 1 hour from Gimpo by taxi Transfers: Hotel shuttle to Dongguk University station, Myeongdong and Dongdaemun; private transfer on request; lobby pick-up from the car park or bus stop on ten minutes' notice Rates: On request Website: shillahotels.com