Taipei: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
Taipei began here, at a river port Chinese merchants set up in the eighteenth century. This is the oldest, poorest and most alive quarter in the city — and it holds the temple people come to when things are hard. Two hours, and arrive towards seven in the evening, when the incense and the markets start.
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A short history of Taipei
Until the 19th century the Taipei Basin was an area of villages and rice farms. In 1884 the city walls built by the Chinese Qing rulers were completed, and a year later Taiwan became a separate province of China. In 1895 the island passed to Japan, and during fifty years of Japanese rule government buildings and wide streets were built in the city. In 1949, after defeat in the civil war, Chiang Kai-shek moved the government of the Republic of China to Taipei. In 2004 the Taipei 101 tower was opened; until 2010 it was the tallest building in the world.
The ten best sights in Taipei
1Taipei 101The 660-tonne damper is visible, and it is the only one in the world that is
2National Palace MuseumThe Forbidden City’s collection, carried here in 1949
3Chiang Kai-shek MemorialEighty-nine steps, one for each year he lived
4Longshan Temple1738, and it is busiest at seven in the evening
5Bao’an TempleA UNESCO restoration award, and the fire festival in May
6Confucius TempleNo statues inside, and no incense. Free
7Bopiliao Historic BlockA Qing-era street left standing, and free to walk
8Red HouseA 1908 octagonal market hall, now theatre and bars
9Sun Yat-sen Memorial HallGuard change on the hour, and the 101 framed behind it
10Taipei Fine Arts MuseumNT$30, and the building is better than the price
Scan with your phone camera to open the map there
What is an audio walk?
Tours in Taipei →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Taipei:
Free walking tours in Taipei
Wanhua
Taipei began here, at a river port Chinese merchants set up in the eighteenth century. This is the oldest, poorest and most alive quarter in the city — and it holds the temple people come to when things are hard. Two hours, and arrive towards seven in the evening, when the incense and the markets start.
- Longshan Temple · Built in 1738 and bombed flat in 1945 — the main hall was destroyed while hundreds sheltered inside, and the Guanyin statue came through untouched. People have prayed here through Qing rule, Japanese rule and martial law, and the place is busiest on a weekday evening.
- Bopiliao Historic Block · One street of Qing-dynasty shophouses that survived because a school owned the land and never developed it. You can see three layers in the same wall — Qing brick, Japanese arcade, post-war concrete — and entry is free.
- Huaxi Street Night Market · The first covered night market in Taipei, and for decades it was known as Snake Alley — the snake restaurants are nearly all gone now, closed by animal welfare law, and what is left is turtle soup, herbal broths and massage.
- Red House · The Japanese built this octagonal market hall in 1908 — eight sides to deflect bad luck, a cross-shaped hall behind it. It is now a theatre, and the square behind it has been the centre of gay Taipei since the 2000s.
- Ximending · The Japanese laid it out as an entertainment district in 1896, and in 1999 it became the first pedestrian-only street zone in Taiwan. Everything here is for people under twenty-five, and it is the loudest half-kilometre in the country.
- Chiang Kai-shek Memorial · Eighty-nine steps, one for each year he lived, up to a bronze statue of a man many Taiwanese regard as a dictator. The square below it is where the democracy protests of 1990 happened, and the argument over whether to keep the hall is still live.
Xinyi and the Tower
All of this quarter was a military base and fields until the 1980s. The city planned it from nothing as a business district, and at its centre stands a tower built on an active fault — which is why a 660-tonne steel ball hangs inside it to hold it steady. Two hours, and finish on the mountain before sunset.
- Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall · The honour guard changes on the hour and the whole thing is deliberately slow — the rifles are spun, the boots are slammed, and it takes twenty minutes. From the back lawn the tower frames perfectly, and that is where everyone takes the photograph.
- Taipei 101 · Five hundred and eight metres, the tallest in the world until 2010, and built on a fault line. A steel pendulum weighing six hundred and sixty tonnes hangs between floors 87 and 92 to damp the sway, and it is the only such damper on earth the public can walk around.
- Xinyi District · Raised walkways connect the malls so you never cross a road, which was the plan: the whole district was laid out in the 1980s on the site of an army barracks, and it is the only part of Taipei that was designed rather than grown.
- Tonghua Night Market · Ten minutes from the tower on foot and almost entirely local — one long lane, no tour groups, and the prices are what people who live here pay. It is the easiest night market in Taipei to eat at without queueing.
- Xiangshan Park · The trailhead is a five-minute walk from the metro exit and nobody tells you that, so most people arrive at the bottom of the steps already tired. There is water and shade here, and this is where to rest before the climb.
- Elephant Mountain · Twenty minutes of steep steps — about six hundred of them — to four boulders that everybody stands on for the same photograph. Arrive forty minutes before sunset; the good rocks are taken an hour before, and the walk down in the dark is lit.
Dadaocheng
In the 1860s a British merchant opened an office here and started buying tea — and within a decade Taipei had become an export port. This street is what is left of that city: western baroque facades that Chinese merchants built for themselves, with shops of dried roots and Chinese medicine inside them. Two hours.
- Dihua Street · The oldest commercial street still trading in Taipei, selling dried scallops, mushrooms, birds’ nests and herbs out of the same shops since the 1850s. In the fortnight before Lunar New Year the whole street turns into one market and is almost impassable.
- Yong Le Market · Three floors of fabric above a ground-floor food court that has been feeding the street’s traders since 1908. The oyster vermicelli and the pork rice here cost under a hundred Taiwan dollars, and nobody in the queue is a tourist.
- Bao’an Temple · Restored over seven years by the temple itself without state money, and it won a UNESCO heritage award for it in 2003. The dragon columns at the front were carved by two rival masters working on opposite sides at the same time, and you can tell them apart.
- Confucius Temple · There are no statues and no incense inside — Confucius is honoured with a plaque bearing his name and nothing else, because the teaching is not a religion. It is free, it is almost always empty, and it is fifty metres from the busiest temple in the quarter.
- Ningxia Night Market · Two hundred metres, about sixty stalls, and it is the one Taipei people name when you ask them rather than the big one in Shilin. Everything is food — no clothes, no games — and the oyster omelette stall has been there since the 1950s.
- Chifeng Street · A grid of lanes behind the main road that used to be hardware workshops and is now small independent shops and coffee — and it still has the workshops in between, which is why it does not feel finished.
Getting to Taipei and getting around
- Taoyuan International · The airport MRT is 36 minutes to Main Station, NT$160
- Songshan Airport · Inside the city. Domestic flights and Tokyo
- Taipei Main Station · Six lines meet underground, and it is a maze
- Zhongxiao Fuxing · Where the two busiest lines cross
- Taipei City Hall · The bus terminal for Jiufen and the east coast
Cheap eats in Taipei
Eight counters where Taipei eats standing. The night market is not a tourist attraction here, it is dinner — there are more than twenty of them in the city, open until one in the morning, and almost nothing on a stall costs more than three dollars.
- Fuhang Doujiang · From 5:30am, closed Mondays, under NT$70
- Lin Dong Fang beef noodle · Open until three in the morning, about NT$180
- Ay-Chung, Ximending · NT$65 a bowl, standing, and the queue moves fast
- Lan Jia gua bao · Pork belly in a steamed bun with peanut powder, NT$60
- Yongkang Street scallion pancake · Flaky, folded with an egg, NT$45, and always a queue
- Raohe pepper buns · NT$60, straight out of a clay oven, burns the mouth
- Yong Le Market food court · Oyster vermicelli and pork rice, under NT$100
- Ningxia Night Market · Sixty stalls, all food, and the locals’ first answer
Museums in Taipei
- National Palace Museum · NT$350. Go at opening; by eleven it is full
- Taipei Fine Arts Museum · NT$30, and Taiwanese modern art you will not see elsewhere
- Huashan 1914 · A Japanese sake brewery, now galleries, cinema and a lawn
- Songshan Cultural Park · Free to walk through. The library costs NT$80
- Beitou Hot Spring Museum · The 1913 Japanese bathhouse. Free, and shoes come off
- National Taiwan Museum · NT$30, built by the Japanese in 1915, and small
Nature and day trips near Taipei
- Beitou Thermal Valley · Free. A public hot spring nearby is NT$60
- Yangmingshan · A volcano park inside the city, with sulphur vents. Free
- Maokong · Tea terraces, tea houses open till midnight, city below
- Shifen Waterfall · Taiwan’s widest fall, and free since 2019
- Yehliu Geopark · An hour out. NT$120, and go early
- Jiufen · A gold town on a cliff. Weekday, or not at all
Holy places in Taipei
- Longshan Temple · Free, open till ten, and busiest on a weekday night
- Bao’an Temple · A UNESCO award for its own restoration, and rival dragon columns
- Confucius Temple · No statues, no incense, and almost nobody there
- Xiahai City God Temple · Tiny, on Dihua Street, and famous for the love god inside
- Shifen sky lanterns · You write a wish and let it go over a live railway
- Keelung Miaokou · A night market built around a temple gate, by the sea
Parks and gardens in Taipei
- Da’an Forest Park · Egrets nest on the island, in the middle of the city
- Taipei Botanical Garden · Free, and the lotus pond in July is the reason
- Chiang Kai-shek Shilin Residence · His garden, free, and the house costs NT$100
- Riverside parks · A bike path runs the whole river, and bikes are NT$10
- Tamsui Fisherman’s Wharf · The sunset end of the red line, and a white bridge
- Taipei Zoo · NT$60, huge, and the gondola leaves from its gate
Nightlife in Taipei
- Ximending · Loud until two, and everyone there is under twenty-five
- Red House square · Open-air bars, and the centre of gay Taipei
- Legacy Taipei · A live house inside the old sake brewery, NT$1,000
- Revolver · Two floors, cheap, and bands every night of the week
- Maokong tea houses · Open past midnight, and the whole city lit below
- Gongguan · Student bars by the university, and the cheapest beer
Frequently asked questions about Taipei
What is there to see in Taipei?
The top sights in Taipei are Taipei 101, National Palace Museum and Chiang Kai-shek Memorial. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Taipei?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Taipei without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Taipei?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Taipei, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: Wanhua.
How do you get to Taipei and get around?
The main ways are Taoyuan International, Songshan Airport and Taipei Main Station. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Taipei, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Taipei that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Taipei for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.