Tainan travel guide

Top 10 sights in Tainan

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

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   1© CEphoto, Uwe Aranas · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Fort Zeelandia

   The Dutch East India Company's fortress, built between 1624 and 1634 at Anping, and the seat of Dutch rule over Formosa. Koxinga besieged it for nine months and took it in 1662, ending that rule. Brick walls, a banyan grown through them, and a museum are what survive.

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   2© Koika · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Fort Provintia

   A Dutch outpost of 1653, built after a Chinese revolt showed the company needed a second stronghold inland. Koxinga took it in 1661 and made it his headquarters. The Dutch foundations survive beneath a pair of Chinese pavilions built on top in the nineteenth century.

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   3© Koika · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Taijiang National Park

   A national park on the western coast at Tainan in Taiwan. Mudflats, salt pans and mangrove run along it, black-faced spoonbills winter there, and the old channels used by Dutch-period trading ships lie within it.

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   Chimei Museum

   A private museum built by the founder of a petrochemical company and given to the public, in a neoclassical building in Rende. It holds Western art, arms and armour, natural history and one of the largest violin collections in the world, including several Stradivari that are lent out to be played.

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   5© Chensiyuan · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Eternal Golden Castle

   A defensive battery in the Anping district of Tainan. The Qing built it in 1874 in the Western manner, with French engineers, against a Japanese attack, and the calligraphy on the plaque over the gate survives from that time.

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   6© Chainwit. · CC BY 4.0

   Tainan Confucian Temple

   A Confucian temple on Nanmen Road in the West Central district of Tainan. It is also called Quantai Shouxue, the first school in Taiwan.

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7. 

   7© 阿文 · CC BY 3.0

   National Museum of Taiwan Literature

   The national museum of Taiwanese literature, in the Japanese-era Tainan city hall of 1916. Its subject is deliberately broad — indigenous oral literature, classical Chinese verse, Japanese-language writing and modern Taiwanese fiction, all treated as one tradition.

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8. 

   8© Chongkian · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Tainan Mosque

   The second mosque built in southern Taiwan, begun in 1983 and finished in 1996 with help from the congregation at Kaohsiung. Yen Ming-kuang designed its four storeys, which hold shops, ablution rooms, offices and the prayer hall used for Friday prayers.

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   9© Taiwania Justo · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Tainan Art Museum

   The Tainan Art Museum, split between a first building converted from a police station of the Japanese colonial period and a second built new by Shigeru Ban as a white crystalline form.

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10. 

    10© Pbdragonwang · CC BY-SA 3.0

    National Museum of Taiwan History

    The national museum of Taiwanese history at Tainan. It covers the island from prehistory to the present, running the indigenous peoples and the Dutch, Qing and Japanese periods into one narrative.

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   USS Sarsfield

   A former United States Navy destroyer moored at Anping in Tainan. She was commissioned during the Second World War and later transferred to the Taiwanese navy; she is now a museum ship open below decks.

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   2© User: (WT-shared) Naplee12 at wts wikivoyage · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Grand Matsu Temple

   A Taoist temple in Tainan, built in the Qing period. It stands in the lanes of the old town and has served as a centre of local devotion ever since.

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   3© Pbdragonwang · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Koxinga Ancestral Shrine

   A shrine in Tainan. It honours figures of the Koxinga regime and continues the record of the city as the centre of Taiwan under the Ming loyalists.

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   4© Winertai · CC BY-SA 3.0

   State Temple of the Martial God

   A temple in Tainan, founded in the Qing period and administered ever since by the leading local families. It stands in a narrow lane and holds the grain of the old town exactly.

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   5© Pbdragonwang · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Tianhou Temple

   A Mazu temple in Tainan. It was built on the site of the princely residence of the Koxinga period, which makes it the earliest official Mazu temple in Taiwan, and seafarers came to it to pray for safety at sea.

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   Koxinga's Shrine

   A shrine in Tainan honouring Koxinga, who crossed to Taiwan in the Ming cause. The Qing built it in 1875 when they formally recognised him.

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   Tainan Shrine

   The site of a Japanese Shinto shrine in Tainan, built during the colonial period and demolished after the war. Other buildings now occupy the ground and only traces remain.

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   8© Sean Chiu · CC BY 4.0

   Cathedral of Our Lady of China

   The Catholic cathedral of Tainan, built with Chinese roofs and columns and treated as an example of Western religious architecture rendered in a local form.

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   9© User: (WT-shared) Naplee12 at wts wikivoyage · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Temple of the Five Concubines

   A shrine in Tainan. It holds the five concubines who took their own lives when the Zheng regime fell, and their tomb lies behind it.

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    10© Pbdragonwang · CC BY-SA 3.0

    Kaiyuan Temple

    A Buddhist temple on the grounds where Zheng Jing, son of Koxinga and ruler of the Kingdom of Tungning, built a garden residence for his mother in 1680. After the kingdom fell to the Qing the site became a monastery, and it remains one of the largest temples in Tainan.

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