Explore Tainan

Shennong Street is a narrow lane in Tainan's West Central District that grew up in the Qing era beside one of the Five Canals, the waterways that linked the old city to its harbour. Its two-storey wooden shophouses, with shops below and storerooms above, now hold cafés, bars and studios, and the street takes its name from the Medicine King Temple at its end.

The Hayashi Department Store is a five-storey building in Tainan's West Central District, designed by Umezawa Sutejirō and opened by the Japanese merchant Hayashi Hōichi in December 1932 with one of Taiwan's first passenger lifts. Restored and reopened in 2014, it sells Taiwanese crafts and food and keeps a small Shinto shrine and an observation deck on its roof.

The Grand Matsu Temple in Tainan's West Central District began as the palace of the Ming prince Zhu Shugui, built in 1664. After the Qing conquest it became in 1684 the first temple to honour the sea goddess Mazu as Empress of Heaven; its present halls date largely from 1775, and the rear hall honours Mazu's parents.

The Koxinga Ancestral Shrine is the family temple that Zheng Jing built in 1663 in Tainan to honour his father Koxinga, the Ming loyalist who drove the Dutch from Taiwan. The modest brick complex of three halls holds a statue of Koxinga and tablets of the Zheng ancestors; the well in front of the gate survives from the original shrine.

The State Temple of the Martial God, also called the Grand Guandi Temple, stands just south of Chihkan Tower in Tainan and is dedicated to Guan Yu, the deified general of the Three Kingdoms. It grew from a shrine of the Zheng era in the 1660s, took its present layout in 1690 and in 1727 was granted official spring and autumn rites; its long red gable wall lines Yongfu Road.

The Tainan Confucian Temple on Nanmen Road was founded in 1665 by Chen Yonghua under the Kingdom of Tungning as Taiwan's first school, known as the First Academy of Taiwan. Its red-walled courtyards set the temple, with the Dacheng Hall and its Qing imperial plaques, beside the Minglun Hall of the old academy, among banyan trees.

Chihkan Tower stands on the site of Fort Provintia, the outpost the Dutch built in 1653 on the mainland opposite Fort Zeelandia, in what is now Tainan's West Central District. Arched brick remains of the Dutch walls lie beneath two Qing-era pavilions, the Haishen Temple and the Wenchang Pavilion, set in a garden with nine stone tablets carried on stone turtles.

The Tainan Art Museum occupies the former Tainan Police Station, an Art Deco building of the early 1930s by Umezawa Sutejirō, the architect of the nearby Hayashi Department Store. Restored and opened as a museum in 2018, it shows Taiwanese art from its collection in changing exhibitions and runs an art conservation and research centre.

The Eternal Golden Castle, or Erkunshen Battery, is a coastal fort in Anping District, Tainan, built from 1874 to 1876 by the Qing official Shen Baozhen after the Japanese expedition to Taiwan. The square earthwork has corner bastions and a moat; a red-brick gate bearing its name leads to a parade ground with replica cannons.

Anping Old Fort stands on the site of Fort Zeelandia, the fortress the Dutch East India Company built in Anping, west of central Tainan, between 1624 and 1634 and surrendered to Koxinga in 1662. A red-brick wall of the Dutch outer fort survives below the hilltop, where a Japanese-era house holds an exhibition and a white lookout tower gives views over Anping.

The Teyang Destroyer Museum is the former US Navy destroyer USS Sarsfield, launched in 1945, which served the Republic of China Navy as Te Yang from 1977 to 2005. Since 2009 it has been moored in Anping Harbour, west of central Tainan, where visitors walk its decks, gun mounts, bridge and crew quarters.

Anping Tree House is a former warehouse in Anping District, Tainan, built in 1867 for the British trading firm Tait & Co. to store sugar and camphor and later used by the Japan Salt Company. Left empty, it was overgrown by a banyan whose roots now form its walls and roof; walkways added in 2004 lead through and above it, beside the old merchant house.

Sicao Green Tunnel is a mangrove-lined waterway behind the Sicao Dazhong Temple in Annan District, north-west of central Tainan. The channel was once used to carry salt and sugar; today small boats take visitors along it beneath mangrove branches that meet overhead and form a green tunnel.

The National Museum of Taiwan History opened in 2011 in Annan District, on Tainan's northern edge about 9 km from the old city centre. Its permanent exhibition traces the island's story from its first Indigenous peoples through Dutch, Spanish, Qing and Japanese rule to modern Taiwan, drawing on a collection of some 60,000 objects; a park with a lake surrounds the building.

The Chimei Museum is a private museum founded in 1992 by Shi Wen-long of the Chi Mei Corporation, housed since 2014 in a domed Neoclassical building in Tainan Metropolitan Park, Rende District, south-east of the city centre. Its collections cover Western painting and sculpture, musical instruments including many violins, arms and armour, and natural history.