Explore Taipei

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.

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.

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 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 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.

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.

Beitou Thermal Valley, also called Hell Valley, is a steaming hot-spring pool in a small ravine above Beitou, fed by acidic water at up to about 90 °C. A walkway with railings runs round the green pool, which gives off clouds of sulphurous vapour, and the spring's water supplies many of Beitou's bathhouses.