Explore Taipei

Taipei 101 is a 508-metre skyscraper in the Xinyi district, completed in 2004 and designed by C.Y. Lee to recall a stack of bamboo sections. Its observatory on the 89th floor, reached by high-speed lifts, looks over the city and the surrounding hills, and inside hangs the 660-tonne tuned mass damper that steadies the tower.

Elephant Mountain (Xiangshan) is a 183-metre hill at the edge of the Xinyi district, one of the Four Beasts hills south-east of the city centre. A stepped trail from Xiangshan station climbs about 20 minutes to viewing platforms and boulders that look straight across at Taipei 101 and the city below.

Huashan 1914 Creative Park occupies a former sake and later rice-wine distillery near Zhongxiao Xinsheng station, founded in 1914 and closed in 1987. Its red-brick warehouses and factory halls now hold exhibitions, concerts, design shops, cafés and small cinemas, with lawns between the buildings.

Xingtian Temple on Minquan East Road, completed in 1967, is dedicated to Guan Yu, the deified general venerated as a patron of merchants. It has no offering boxes, sells no incense and burns no paper money, and volunteers in blue robes perform blessing rituals for the many worshippers who come each day.

Taipei Water Park in Gongguan occupies the grounds of the city's first waterworks, built under Japanese rule in 1908. Its centrepiece is the Museum of Drinking Water, the former pumping station with Baroque columns, and around it are gardens, the old slow-sand filter beds and a water-play area for children in summer.

The Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, completed in 1980, is a 70-metre white hall with a blue octagonal roof at the east end of Liberty Square in Zhongzheng district. A bronze statue of Chiang sits in the main hall, the ground floor holds exhibitions on his life, and the square is framed by the National Theater and Concert Hall.

Taipei Zoo in the Muzha area of Wenshan district is the city's zoo, founded in 1914 and moved to its present 165-hectare site in 1986. Its areas cover Taiwanese animals, the tropical rainforest, Asian, African and Australian species, a penguin house, a nocturnal house and the giant pandas' house, next to the Maokong Gondola's lower station.

The Maokong Gondola, opened in 2007, runs 4 km from beside Taipei Zoo up to Maokong, a hillside of tea plantations and teahouses in Wenshan district. The ride takes about 20 to 30 minutes over four stations, including one at Zhinan Temple, and some cabins have glass floors.

228 Peace Memorial Park in Zhongzheng district, laid out in 1908 as Taihoku New Park, was renamed in 1996 in memory of the victims of the 28 February 1947 incident and the repression that followed. It has ponds, pavilions, a bandshell, the National Taiwan Museum at its north end and the Taipei 228 Memorial Museum in its old radio station.

The National Taiwan Museum, founded in 1908 under Japanese rule, is the oldest museum in Taiwan. Its main building of 1915 at the north end of 228 Peace Memorial Park, with a domed hall and Doric columns, shows the island's natural history, Indigenous cultures and archaeology; a former bank across the road holds its land-bank branch with dinosaur skeletons.

The Miramar Ferris Wheel turns on top of the Miramar Entertainment Park shopping centre in Dazhi, Zhongshan district, opened in 2004. About 70 metres across and reaching some 100 metres above the street, its cabins look over the Keelung River, the Songshan airport runway and the hills of Neihu.

The Presidential Office Building in Zhongzheng district was completed in 1919 as the office of the Japanese Governor-General of Taiwan and has housed the president of the Republic of China since 1950. Its red-brick and stone façade with a 60-metre central tower faces Ketagalan Boulevard; parts of the ground floor open for guided visits on weekday mornings with photo ID.

The Taipei Fine Arts Museum, opened in 1983 in Zhongshan district, was Taiwan's first museum of modern and contemporary art. Its white building of stacked, interlocking boxes stands beside the Expo Park and shows Taiwanese art from the 20th century to today and international exhibitions, and it hosts the Taipei Biennial.

Ximending is a pedestrian shopping and entertainment district in Wanhua, laid out under Japanese rule as Taipei's first entertainment quarter. Its streets around Ximen station are lined with fashion shops, cinemas, street food and tattoo parlours, and the octagonal Red House of 1908, a former market, now holds a theatre and craft stalls.

The Taipei Confucius Temple in Datong district was built between 1927 and 1939 in the southern Fujian style by the master craftsman Wang Yi-shun, replacing an earlier temple demolished under Japanese rule. Its Dacheng Hall has no statue of Confucius, only a memorial tablet, and an annual ceremony on 28 September marks his birthday.

Dalongdong Baoan Temple in Datong district was founded in the 18th century by immigrants from Tong'an in Fujian and is dedicated to Baosheng Dadi, a deified physician. Restored in the 1990s, work that earned a UNESCO Asia-Pacific heritage award in 2003, it is known for its wood carvings, wall paintings and the Baosheng Cultural Festival each spring.

Dihua Street in Dadaocheng, Datong district, was a river-port trading street in the 19th century and is lined with merchant houses in Fujianese, Baroque and modernist styles from the 1850s to the 1930s. Shops still sell dried goods, Chinese herbs and fabrics, beside cafés and design shops, and the Xiahai City God Temple stands midway.

Bangka Lungshan Temple in Wanhua was founded in 1738 by settlers from Fujian and rebuilt several times, most recently after bombing in 1945. Its halls, with carved stone dragon pillars and roofs crowded with ceramic figures, are dedicated to the Buddhist goddess Guanyin and to Taoist and folk deities, and worshippers come throughout the day.

Shilin Night Market, around the Shilin Market building near Jiantan station, is the largest night market in Taipei, dating back to 1909. Stalls and small shops sell street food such as oyster omelettes, fried chicken cutlets and pepper buns, along with clothes, games and household goods, and the basement food court gathers dozens of cooked-food stands.

The Shilin Official Residence was the home of Chiang Kai-shek and Soong Mei-ling from 1950 until his death in 1975. The two-storey main house keeps its furnishings and is shown on timed visits, while the surrounding gardens, with a rose garden, a chapel and a Chinese garden, are open as a public park.