Sit­u­at­ed in Kaesong city, in the south of the coun­try, the site con­sists of 12 sep­a­rate com­po­nents, which togeth­er tes­ti­fy to the his­to­ry and cul­ture of the Koryo Dynasty from the 10th to 14th cen­turies. The geo­man­tic lay­out of the for­mer cap­i­tal city of Kaesong, its palaces, insti­tu­tions and tomb com­plex, defen­sive walls and gates embody the polit­i­cal, cul­tur­al, philo­soph­i­cal and spir­i­tu­al val­ues of a cru­cial era in the region&rsquo,s history.&nbsp The mon­u­ments inscribed also include an astro­nom­i­cal and mete­o­ro­log­i­cal obser­va­to­ry, two schools (includ­ing one ded­i­cat­ed to edu­cat­ing nation­al offi­cials) and com­mem­o­ra­tive ste­les. The site tes­ti­fies to the tran­si­tion from Bud­dhism to neo-Con­­fu­­cian­ism in East Asia and to the assim­i­la­tion of the cul­tur­al spir­i­tu­al and polit­i­cal val­ues of the states that exist­ed pri­or to Korea&rsquos uni­fi­ca­tion under the Koryo Dynasty. The inte­gra­tion of Bud­dhist, Con­fu­cian, Taoist and geo­man­tic con­cepts is man­i­fest in the plan­ning of the site and the archi­tec­ture of its mon­u­ments.