Shilla Cultural Festival (redirected from Silla Shilla Cultural Festival)

Shilla (Silla) Cultural Festival

October in even-numbered years

The Shilla Cultural Festival is an exuberant three-day festival, one of Korea's biggest and most impressive, to celebrate the country's ancient Shilla Kingdom. The celebrations are held in Kyongju, the capital of the Shilla Kingdom, and throughout the Kyongju Valley, where there is a great treasure of historic buildings: the Sokkuram Grotto, one of Asia's finest Buddhist shrines with a granite dome; Ch'omsongdae, a seventh-century bottle-shaped stone structure that is the world's earliest known extant observatory; royal tombs; palaces; and pleasure pavilions. The Shilla Kingdom in the southeastern portion of what is now Korea flourished from 57 b.c.e. to 935 c.e., and defeated two rival kingdoms, unifying all three in 676. The Unified Shilla Period is considered a golden age of Buddhist arts and especially of granite Buddhist sculpture.
The festival features concerts, wrestling matches, Buddhist pagoda dancing, games and contests, and lavish processions with elaborate floats.

CONTACTS:
Korea National Tourism Organization
1 Executive Dr., Ste. 100
Fort Lee, NJ 07024
201-585-0909; fax: 201-585-9041