Build long ranges of shops at public expense along both sides of the main east–west street, let them to licensed merchants trade by trade, and ring the bell at the crossing to open and close the city.
Here Hanyang departs from the Kaogong ji, which puts the market behind the palace: the government market (sijeon) lined Jongno, the main street, in front of the palace and to the east of it. Between 1412 and 1414 the state built more than two thousand bays of shop ranges (haengnang) there, each trade licensed to its own row; the merchants paid rent and supplied the court. The bell in the pavilion at the crossing rang at dusk and dawn to close and open the city gates.
The avenue in front of the palace gate, lined with the offices of the State Council and the Six Ministries, took the place of the “court in front”.
Give the hipped roof (wudian) to the highest halls, the hip-and-gable (xieshan) to the next, and the gabled roofs, overhanging (xuanshan) and flush (yingshan), to lesser buildings and houses; double the eaves for the very highest.
double wudian > double xieshan > wudian > xieshan > xuanshan > yingshan
Give a hall an odd number of bays across the front (three, five, seven, nine or eleven) so that the central axis passes through a bay and a doorway, never through a column.
Lay out the royal city as a square of nine li on each side, with three gates in each wall and, within, nine roads running north–south and nine east–west, each wide enough for nine chariots abreast.
side = 9 li · 3 gates × 4 sides · 9 jing + 9 wei · road width = 9 gui (tracks)
With the palace at the centre facing south, place the ancestral temple on its left (east) and the altar of soil and grain on its right (west); put the court in front and the market behind, each one fu (a hundred paces) square.
Find true north and south with a plumb-lined post and the shadows of sunrise and sunset, checked by the pole star; then turn the principal hall of every compound to face south.
Seat the capital in a basin closed by mountains: a guardian mountain behind (north), a lower range on the left (east) as the Azure Dragon and on the right (west) as the White Tiger, a facing hill in front (south); let a stream cross the basin and a great river flow beyond.
Bugaksan (behind) · Naksan (left, Azure Dragon) · Inwangsan (right, White Tiger) · Namsan (in front) · Cheonggyecheon within, the Han River without
Cite this page Chris Paton, “The market along the main street”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/hanyang-sijeon. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.