Kaohsiung Film Archive is located by the river side of Love River in a beautiful image building. Providing many kinds of screening equipment, film books, and screenings of art films and documentaries. It unfolds a new page to the cinematic history of Kaohsiung. Kaohsiung City Government has been facilitating the establishment of Kaohsiung Film Archive since 2000. Based on the…

Shennong Street (神農街) was the entrance to the Tainan Five Channels area important river ports from the Qing Dynasty. Merchants at the time would all enter Tainan through this street, making it the busiest district. However, a century of evolution has transformed the original river port into a city road. While the street was formerly in decline due to being…

The oldest of its kind in Taiwan, the National Taiwan Museum can be traced back to a showroom for the Bureau of Productive Industries (Shokusankyoku) erected by the colonial-era Taiwan Viceroy’s Office in 1899. The showroom’s displayed items were relocated to the Lottery Bureau behind the present-day Presidential Office, and gave rise to the 1908 opening of Taiwan Viceroy’s Office…

This museum opened in 2008 in a Japanese-style building constructed in 1921 as a high-class hotel. The 1st floor features exhibits of various folk arts, such as cochin (koji) pottery, wood and stone carving, and puppetry. The 2nd floor preserves the look of the original tatami-floored banquet and performance hall. The museum exhibits include a permanent display on the history of the…

This museum and sculpture park is where you’ll see the riveting works of Taiwan’s best-known contemporary sculptor, Ju Ming (1938–), against the backdrop of nature. Ju Ming has works strewn all over the world, but the collection here is the most sizeable. It includes the massive, minimalist stone pieces of the celebrated ‘Tai Chi’ series. Born in Tongxiao, Miaoli in…

Behind the Matsu Temple, the fort was a stronghold of Dutch power until its capture by Koxinga in 1661 after a nine-month battle. In Kangxi Emperor’s regime of Qing Dynasty, Taiwan was included in the empire that the political center was transferred to Tainan City, causing the decline of the Fort. The red bricks of the Fort have been taken…

The Taiwan Museum of Art, which opened in 1988, has a total of 24 exhibition halls. The museum regularly holds exhibitions of Western art, Chinese brush paintings, and sculpture, and has its own collection of valuable pieces of art. Residents can relax in the garden outside the museum. The outdoor courtyard of the Museum comprises a total area of 102,000…

Taipei’s fifth gate, dating back to when the capital was a walled city under the Qing dynasty, though only the gates survive, the original fortifications were extremely strong, with walls four meters thick five meters high and extending a total of four kilometers. Most Chinese walls have four gates, but the Taipei wall had five. Some say that the fifth…

Designed to imitate the area’s cuesta rock formations, this stunning glass and aluminium-panelled structure is worth a visit for the architecture. Exhibits focus on the ecology and history of the Lanyang (Yilan) Plain, an alluvial fan formed by the Lanyang River. The main building incorporates the shape of the cuestas commonly seen along the Beiguan Coast. To also present the…

Stamps, uniforms, machinery, history and so much more for a token admission price. It won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but the stamps of the world collection, while a bit outdated, is pretty impressive; for newer stamps check out the glass cabinets of Taiwan’s special issues. Established in 1965, the exhibits at the Postal Museum document the development of the…