Explore Tainan

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.

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 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.

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.