Famous Landmarks in Taipei
A basin city stacking a 1738 Qing temple, a 1980 memorial hall and a 2004 supertall tower.
Taipei's three catalogued landmarks span three distinct eras of the city's growth. Longshan Temple, raised by settlers from Fujian in 1738 in the low-lying Wanhua district, is the oldest, a folk shrine mixing Buddhist and Taoist worship near the original riverside settlement. Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, completed in 1980 during martial law, stands further east in a formal park square, flanked by a national theatre and concert hall built to the same plan. Taipei 101, opened at the end of 2004 in the Xinyi district still further east, is a postmodern, glass-and-steel supertall that briefly stood as the world's tallest building. Read together, the three sit roughly in chronological order moving east across the basin, from Qing-era settlement through mid-century state monument to a modern financial skyline.
Taipei 101
2004 · C. Y. Lee
A very tall, glass-and-metal tower whose postmodern, neo-futurist design draws on traditional Asian motifs within an otherwise industrial structure; at 508 metres over 101 storeys it dwarfs everything around it and was, for years after its 2004 opening, the tallest building on Earth.
A 101-storey supertall in Taipei's Xinyi district, opened at the end of 2004 as the Taipei World Financial Center before taking its current name. It held the record for the world's tallest building until the Burj Khalifa overtook it in 2009, and remains the tallest structure in Taiwan and the eleventh-tallest worldwide. Owned by the Taipei Financial Center Corporation, its postmodern, neo-futurist design pairs industrial materials with forms drawn from traditional Asian aesthetics.
- Its Toshiba-built elevators once carried passengers from the 5th to the 89th floor in 37 seconds, a world speed record at completion.
- In 2011 it earned a Platinum LEED rating, becoming the tallest and largest certified green building in the world at the time.
- Its New Year's Eve fireworks displays are a regular feature of international broadcasts.
Photo: lumoplank (CC0)
Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall
1980 · Yang Cho-cheng
A large stand-alone monument set within a park at the head of a formal square, flanked to the north and south by a national theatre and a concert hall; its scale and civic role have drawn comparisons to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
A national monument built during Taiwan's martial-law period in memory of former president Chiang Kai-shek, standing in a park at the east end of Memorial Hall Square. It is flanked on the north and south by the National Theater and National Concert Hall, part of the same complex. Completed in 1980, it has since also become a site of remembrance for the martial-law period of 1949 to 1987 rather than only for the man it commemorates, and some liken it to a Taiwanese analogue of the Lincoln Memorial.
Photo: Another Believer (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Longshan Temple
1738
A temple complex holding several forms of worship under one roof: a principal shrine to the bodhisattva Guanyin alongside separate altars to the sea goddess Mazu and the deified general Guan Yu, a mix of Buddhist and folk Taoist devotion unusual within a single building.
A folk temple in the Wanhua district, built in 1738 by Qing-era settlers from Fujian province and dedicated to the bodhisattva Guanyin. It served both as a place of worship and as a gathering place for the Chinese immigrant community that built it. Alongside its Chinese Buddhist elements it holds halls and altars to Taoist folk deities, including Mazu, goddess of the sea, and Guan Yu, a deified general. It is protected as a country-level monument for its heritage value.
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History
Taipei began as a Qing-dynasty riverside settlement, where Fujianese migrants built Longshan Temple in 1738, giving the western Wanhua district its oldest surviving structure and a communal gathering place as well as a shrine. The city became Taiwan's provincial seat in 1887, passed to Japanese administration from 1895, and returned to Republic of China rule in 1945, becoming the seat of the central government from 1949. Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, finished in 1980 during the martial-law period, added a large monument and square east of the old settlement, paired with a national theatre and concert hall; the site has since also become a place of remembrance for that period itself. Continued growth pushed development further east into Xinyi district, where Taipei 101 opened at the end of 2004 as the world's tallest building, a title it held until 2009.