Four days in Taipei: where the emperors' collection ended up, and nobody eats before nine
Three nights in the city: the tower and the hill above it on arrival, the palace museum and a night market, old Taipei and the memorial, and hot springs at Beitou before the airport.
- Length
- 4 days, 3 nights
- Where you stay
- Taipei
- Places
- 10 across 4 days
When the Nationalists lost the civil war in 1949 they took the imperial art collection with them. Crates of Song ceramics, Shang bronzes and Tang paintings crossed the strait to a hillside north of Taipei, and they are still there, rotated a few thousand pieces at a time because there are too many to show at once.
That is the headline, but Taipei's real character is at street level and after dark. This is a city of scooters, betel nut stands, hot spring valleys and about a dozen night markets, and it is the most relaxed capital in East Asia by a wide margin.
It is also easy. The metro is excellent, the signage is bilingual, people go out of their way to help, and four days costs a fraction of what the same trip would in Japan.
Highlights
- The jadeite cabbage and the Song ceramics at the National Palace Museum, taken out of Beijing in 1933 and never returned
- Elephant Mountain twenty minutes before sunset, with the tower filling the frame and half the city behind it
- Longshan Temple at evening chanting, when several hundred people recite the Heart Sutra together
- Oyster omelettes and pepper buns at Raohe or Shilin, eaten standing up
- Beitou, a valley of sulphur steam and Japanese bathhouses twenty five minutes from the middle of town
Where to stay
Taipei, three nights
Zhongshan or the area around Taipei Main Station are the practical bases: metro interchanges, the airport line, and walking distance to Ningxia night market and the old Dadaocheng streets.
Xinyi is the modern district around the tower, good for shopping and bars and a bit sterile. Ximending is the young, loud, neon one. Da'an, around Yongkang Street, is the nicest to walk around and the best for eating.
Day by day
Day 1 in Taipei
The tower, the hill opposite it, and a first night market
Taipei 101 held the title of tallest building in the world from 2004 until Dubai took it, and it is still the thing the city is arranged around. The observation deck is on the eighty ninth floor and the lift gets there in under forty seconds.
The better view, though, is from the hill fifteen minutes' walk east. Elephant Mountain is a steep flight of steps into subtropical forest, and the platforms near the top put the tower dead centre with the whole basin behind it. Go up an hour before sunset and come down in the dark; the path is lit.
Then eat. The nearest night market is a ten minute walk from the tower and is smaller and more local than the famous ones, which makes it a good first one.
- 16:30
Elephant Mountain Hiking Trail
VisitTwenty minutes of steep steps into forest, starting from a trailhead near Xiangshan MRT station, ending at rock platforms that frame the tower. Busy at sunset and worth it anyway. Take water; it is a genuine climb in the humidity.
- 19:00
Taipei 101
ArchitectureFive hundred and eight metres, built as eight stacked sections in the shape of a bamboo stalk, and steadied by a 660 tonne golden pendulum that hangs in the atrium and is visible from the observation floors. Book online to skip the queue.
- 21:00
Tong Hua Night Market
EatA tight neighbourhood market a few minutes west of the tower, less polished than the big ones and stronger on the things visitors are usually warned about. Start here and work up to Shilin.
With more time: The Songshan Cultural and Creative Park, a converted tobacco factory ten minutes north of the tower, is open late and free and is a good hour if the weather closes the hill.
Day 2 in Taipei
The imperial collection, a painted temple, and the biggest night market
Go to the museum first and go early, ideally on a weekday. Chinese tour groups arrive mid morning and the two most famous objects, a piece of jadeite carved into a cabbage and a lump of jasper carved into a slice of pork belly, get a queue of their own.
The collection is enormous and only a fraction is out at a time. Do not try to see all of it. Give two hours to the ceramics and the bronzes and treat everything else as a bonus.
In the afternoon drop down to Dalongdong, where a Taoist temple built between 1805 and 1830 has some of the finest painted and carved decoration in Taiwan, and a Confucian temple stands next door.
Shilin is a few stops south and is the night market everyone means when they say night market.
- 09:00
National Palace Museum
HistoricThe finest collection of Chinese imperial art anywhere, evacuated from Beijing ahead of the Japanese and then carried to Taiwan in 1948 and 1949. Rotated constantly because the storerooms hold hundreds of thousands of pieces. Go at opening, and go for the ceramics.
- 14:00
Dalongdong Baoan Temple
ReligiousA Taoist temple to Baosheng, the god of medicine, begun in 1805 and finished twenty five years later, with door gods, dragon columns and wall paintings that won a UNESCO conservation award. Free, working, and far less visited than Longshan.
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- 18:30
Shilin Night Market
OtherThe largest and most famous night market in the city, going since the nineteenth century, with a covered food basement and streets of stalls around it. Crowded, touristy, and still the right place to eat an oyster omelette and a giant fried chicken cutlet.
With more time: The Confucius temple next door to Baoan is quiet, plain and free, and on 28 September it hosts a dawn ceremony with eight rows of dancers that has been performed the same way for centuries.
Day 3 in Taipei
Old Taipei, a controversial memorial, and the good eating streets
Wanhua is the oldest part of the city and Longshan Temple is its centre. It was founded by settlers from Fujian in 1738, flattened by American bombing in 1945 and rebuilt, and it is busy with people praying at every hour of the day.
Time it for a chanting session if you can. Several hundred people reciting together under the incense is the single most memorable thing in Taipei.
Bopiliao, five minutes away, is a block of restored nineteenth century shophouses and the best surviving piece of the street pattern the temple grew up in.
The afternoon goes east to the Chiang Kai-shek memorial, which is both a national monument and an argument the country is still having. The two curved-roofed halls flanking it are the opera house and the concert hall.
- 09:30
Longshan Temple
ReligiousFounded in 1738 by settlers from Fujian, dedicated to Guanyin, and packed with the deities of half a dozen other traditions besides. Rebuilt after wartime bombing. Free, always busy, and best at the evening chanting.
- 11:30
Bopiliao Old Street
VisitA restored block of Qing dynasty red brick shophouses with arcaded walkways, five minutes from the temple, used for exhibitions and film sets. The best idea anywhere in Taipei of what the streets looked like before the Japanese rebuilt them.
- 15:00
National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall
VisitA white and blue hall on a vast plaza, with a bronze Chiang seated inside and an hourly changing of the guard. Renamed, unrenamed and permanently argued over. The flag comes down at sunset, which is the best time to be there.
With more time: Yongkang Street is fifteen minutes east of the memorial and is where Taipei eats properly: beef noodle shops, mango ice, small tea houses and the original branch of a very famous dumpling restaurant.
Day 4 in Taipei
Sulphur, steam and a Japanese bathhouse
Beitou is a hot spring valley twenty five minutes north on the metro, developed by the Japanese in the 1890s and still doing exactly the same job. The whole place smells faintly of sulphur and the stream running through the park is warm.
Start at the old public bathhouse, now a museum, which has been restored down to the tiled Roman-style pool and the tatami resting room upstairs. Then walk up the valley to the source, a jade green pool that runs at close to boiling.
Bathe if you have time. The open air public baths on the way up cost a few pounds and are the least ceremonious hot spring in East Asia.
From Beitou it is a straight run back to Taipei Main and the airport line, so this works before a late afternoon flight.
- 09:30
Beitou Hot Springs Museum
VisitThe public bathhouse the Japanese built in 1913, in brick and half timber, restored and open as a free museum. The great tiled bath downstairs and the tatami floor above give you the whole story of the valley in forty minutes.
- 11:30
Geothermal Valley
VisitThe source of the valley's hot springs, a steaming green sulphur pool that reaches close to 100 degrees, ringed by a boardwalk ten minutes uphill from the museum. Free, and completely fogged in on a cool morning.
With more time: The Millennium Hot Spring, halfway between the two, is an outdoor public bath in tiers of different temperatures for the price of a coffee, and you need a swimming costume and a cap.
Before you go
Getting around
The MRT is fast, clean and covers everything below, and an EasyCard bought at any station pays for it, the buses, and most convenience stores. Eating and drinking on the metro is banned and enforced.
Taxis are cheap and plentiful and drivers do not usually speak English, so show the destination in Chinese characters. Uber works normally here.
The airport MRT takes about forty minutes to Taoyuan and runs from Taipei Main Station. There is an express and a slower commuter service on the same line, so check which one you are getting on.
Night markets
Every district has one and they open around six and run past midnight. Shilin is the biggest and the most touristed, Raohe is the tidiest and easiest, Ningxia is the most food-focused and the least crowded.
The things to try are pepper buns baked on the wall of a clay oven, oyster omelette, braised pork rice, and shaved ice with mango in summer. Stinky tofu smells worse than it tastes, which is not a high bar.
Take cash in small notes, and expect to eat standing up. Portions are small on purpose so that you can work down a street.
When to come
October to December and March to April are the comfortable windows. Winter is mild but grey and drizzly, and Taipei sits in a basin that traps the damp.
June to September is hot, humid and the typhoon season. A direct hit closes everything for a day, and the warning comes a couple of days ahead.
Chinese New Year empties the city of residents and closes a lot of restaurants, which is either peaceful or frustrating depending on what you came for.
Taipei does not perform for visitors. There is no old town that has been prettified, no skyline that photographs better than it lives, and the best evening in the city costs about five pounds and happens on a street with plastic stools.
What it has instead is the best Chinese art collection in the world, temples people actually use, hot springs on the metro line, and a level of ordinary friendliness that catches most first time visitors off guard.
Or make it a longer trip
These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.
Make it your trip
Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.
Common questions
- Is four days enough for Taipei?
- For the city, yes. Four days covers the museum, the temples, the markets and Beitou at an easy pace. It does not cover the day trips, and there are three good ones: Jiufen and the north coast, Yehliu's rock formations, and Pinxi where people launch paper lanterns. Add a day for each you want.
- How much time do I need at the National Palace Museum?
- Two to three hours, and no more, unless you have a specific interest. The permanent display rotates because the collection runs to several hundred thousand objects, so trying to see everything is meaningless. Go at opening, take the ceramics and bronzes seriously, and leave before the fatigue sets in.
- Which night market should I go to?
- Raohe if you want one that is easy to navigate, Ningxia if you want the best food and the fewest tourists, Shilin if you want the full spectacle. All three open around six. Go to more than one; they are the best value evenings in the city.
- Do I need a visa for Taiwan?
- Most Western passports enter visa free for ninety days. Taiwan is entirely separate from mainland China for immigration purposes, and a Chinese visa is neither needed nor useful here. Entering Taiwan does not affect a later mainland trip.
- Can I change this plan?
- Yes. Copy it into the planner and swap the last morning for a day trip to Jiufen, or move the museum if you would rather go on a quieter weekday.