Three days in Tainan: the island's first capital, and still the best place to eat on it
Two nights in the old town: the Dutch fort tower and the temple quarter on arrival, Anping and its banyan-swallowed warehouse the next day, and the Confucius temple before the train.
- Length
- 3 days, 2 nights
- Where you stay
- Tainan
- Places
- 8 across 3 days
The Dutch East India Company landed here in 1624 and built a fort in the sand. Forty years later a Ming loyalist admiral called Koxinga threw them out, and Tainan became the capital of Taiwan for the next two hundred years. Almost every layer of that is still standing somewhere in the old town.
It is also where Taiwanese food was invented, and Tainanese will tell you so within ten minutes of meeting you. Coffin bread, milkfish soup for breakfast, danzai noodles, shrimp rolls, and a sweetness in the seasoning that the rest of the island regards as a local eccentricity.
The city is small and low, the sights are all within a couple of kilometres, and after Taipei the pace is a shock. Two nights is enough, and nobody has ever regretted a third.
Highlights
- Chihkan Tower, two Qing pavilions standing on a Dutch fort whose brickwork is still visible at ground level
- The Anping Tree House, a nineteenth century warehouse that a banyan has completely taken over
- Fort Zeelandia, where the Dutch East India Company gave up Taiwan and sailed away in 1662
- The oldest Confucian academy on the island, in a walled garden with a shaved ice shop outside the gate
- Danzai noodles cooked over a charcoal stove at knee height, the way they were sold on the roadside a century ago
Where to stay
Tainan, two nights
Stay in the West Central District, around Chihkan Tower or the Confucius temple. Everything in the old town is then a walk, the night markets are a short taxi, and the lanes around there are full of converted Japanese-era houses.
Anping is quieter and by the water, and puts you four kilometres from the temples. It suits a second visit rather than a first.
Day by day
Day 1 in Tainan
A Dutch fort under Chinese pavilions, and the temple quarter
Start at the middle. Chihkan Tower is what the Dutch called Fort Provintia, built in 1653 and taken by Koxinga nine years later. The Qing raised two pavilions over the original brick base, and that base is still there under your feet.
The temples around it are the point of the afternoon. Tainan has more of them than anywhere else in Taiwan and they are all in use, with fortune blocks clattering on the floor and incense going constantly.
Eat early and often. The old town has famous stalls on almost every corner, and the ones with queues at five in the afternoon are the ones to join.
- 15:00
Chihkan Tower
HistoricTwo Qing dynasty pavilions raised on the foundations of the Dutch Fort Provintia of 1653, with the original brickwork and a well visible below. Small, central, and the best single explanation of how many hands this city has changed.
- 17:00
Sacrificial Rites Martial Temple
ReligiousA long red-walled temple to Guan Yu, mixing Taoist and Buddhist worship, with eighteen arhat figures inside. Busy with worshippers all day, and one of the few places where you can watch divination blocks being thrown continuously.
- 18:30
Tianhou Temple
ReligiousBuilt just after Koxinga took the island in 1662 and thought to be the oldest surviving Mazu temple in Taiwan, dedicated to the sea goddess that every fishing family on this coast prays to.
- 20:00
Du Hsiao Yueh
EatThe famous house for danzai noodles, cooked at a low charcoal stove by the door: a small bowl of noodles in pork and shrimp broth with one prawn on top. Order two, and add a braised egg.
With more time: The Great South Gate, fifteen minutes south, is the best preserved of the old city gates and stands in a park with a collection of Qing stone tablets around it.
Day 2 in Tainan
Anping: a fort, a warehouse full of tree, and an old street
Anping is where the Dutch landed and where the sea used to be. The harbour silted up long ago and the fort now sits inland, but the district still feels like a port: low houses, drying racks, shrimp cake shops and canals.
Fort Zeelandia is the historical anchor. The Dutch held out here for nine months against Koxinga's siege before surrendering the island in 1662, and what is left is a wall of brick set with oyster shell mortar and a later lookout tower on top.
The tree house nearby is the thing people remember. A trading company warehouse was abandoned in the 1940s and a banyan moved in, so the roots now hold the walls up and the roof is leaves. Walkways run through it at first floor level.
Anping Old Street is where lunch happens, and the night market is the evening.
- 09:00
Anping Fort
OtherFort Zeelandia, begun by the Dutch in 1624 and surrendered to Koxinga in 1662 after a nine month siege. The original oyster-shell mortar wall survives at the side; the white tower on top is a later addition with a good view over the district.
- 11:30
Anping Tree House
OtherA nineteenth century British trading warehouse, abandoned after the salt trade collapsed, now completely occupied by a banyan whose roots hold the brickwork together. Raised walkways let you go through the middle of it.
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- 13:30
Anping Old Street
LandmarkThe lane behind the fort, lined with stalls selling shrimp cakes, preserved plums and dried fruit, plus a lot of things being fried. Lunch here rather than sitting down anywhere.
- 18:30
Garden Night Market
EatThe biggest of Tainan's night markets, set up in a car park and open on Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays. Hundreds of stalls, carnival games, and a genuine crush at the weekend. Check the day before you go.
With more time: Boat trips run through the mangrove tunnel at Sicao, twenty minutes north of Anping, where the branches close over the water into a green corridor.
Day 3 in Tainan
The first academy, and the man who took the island
Two sites five minutes apart close the loop on the history you have been walking through. The Confucius temple was founded in 1665, the year after Koxinga's son consolidated the family's rule, and it was the island's first school.
It is a walled compound of low red halls under old trees, and it is quiet in a way that nothing else in the city is. The shaved ice shop across the road has been there for generations and is part of the visit.
Koxinga's shrine is a short walk away. He is the most contested figure in Taiwanese history, claimed in turn by the Qing, the Japanese, the Nationalists and Beijing, and the shrine has been rebuilt to suit each of them.
The station is fifteen minutes from here, so this fits before any afternoon departure.
- 09:00
Confucius Temple
ReligiousFounded in 1665 as the first academy in Taiwan and still the model for every Confucian temple on the island. Low red halls, a walled garden and old trees. Free to walk the grounds, small charge for the main hall.
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- 11:00
Koxinga's Shrine
ReligiousA shrine to Zheng Chenggong, the half Japanese Ming loyalist who expelled the Dutch and ruled Taiwan for a year before dying at thirty seven. Rebuilt repeatedly, most recently in a style that is more Chinese than Japanese, which is itself the point.
With more time: The National Museum of Taiwan History, twenty minutes north, tells the whole story from the aboriginal peoples through the Dutch, the Qing, the Japanese and 1945, and is worth a half day if you have one.
Before you go
Getting there and around
High speed trains from Taipei take about ninety minutes to Tainan HSR station, which is out of town and connected to the centre by a shuttle train in twenty minutes. The slower coastal line runs into the old station in the middle of the city.
Central Tainan is compact and flat and best walked. Anping is four kilometres west and easiest by bus, taxi or a rented bicycle along the canal.
Scooters are everywhere and rentals need a licence that most visitors do not have. Taxis are cheap and Uber works.
Eating
Tainan eats early and constantly. Beef soup and milkfish congee are breakfast dishes served from six, and many of the famous places have sold out by two in the afternoon.
The dishes worth chasing are danzai noodles, coffin bread, shrimp rolls, oyster omelette and eel noodles. Portions are deliberately small so you can eat at four places in an evening.
There are three main night markets and they open on different days, which catches people out. Garden market runs Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, Wusheng on Tuesday, Friday and Saturday, Dadong most nights. Check before you set out.
When to come
Tainan is the sunniest city in Taiwan and the driest, which is why the salt fields are here. November to March is warm, dry and pleasant.
May to September is hot and humid with afternoon storms, and typhoons come through between July and October.
The Confucius temple ceremony on 28 September and the Yanshui fireworks festival in the fifteenth day of the first lunar month are both worth planning around, the second one only if you like being shot at with rockets.
Tainan is the only city in Taiwan where the history is not something you have to go and look for in a museum. It is in a Dutch wall behind a temple, in a warehouse being eaten by a tree, in an academy that has been teaching since 1665.
But the thing that will actually keep you there an extra day is the food. Every other city in Taiwan concedes it, which is a rare thing for anybody in Asia to concede about anywhere.
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 Tainan worth visiting over Taipei?
- Not instead of, but alongside. Tainan has the history Taipei does not, because Taipei only became the capital in the 1880s, and it has the best food on the island by common consent. It is ninety minutes from Taipei on the high speed line, so there is no reason to choose.
- How many days do I need?
- Two nights covers the old town and Anping properly. A third would let you get out to the salt fields at Qigu, the lagoon and the Taijiang mangroves, or the Chimei Museum, which is a private collection of violins and armour in a building that looks like a European palace.
- When are the night markets open?
- They rotate by day, which is unique to Tainan and catches everyone out. Garden market runs Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, Wusheng on Tuesday, Friday and Saturday, and Dadong most evenings. Confirm on the day rather than turning up hopefully.
- Can I do Tainan as a day trip from Kaohsiung?
- You can, since it is forty minutes by train, and it is a thin version of the city. Tainan's best hours are early morning, when the breakfast places open, and after dark, when the temples are lit and the markets start. A day trip catches neither.
- Can I change this plan?
- Yes. Copy it into the planner, add a night for the salt flats, or move Anping to the first day if the night market schedule suits it better.