Taipei for first-time visitors

Must-see attractions

Taipei's must-sees are not its most photographed views. The city's landmark stops are civic and quiet: a national memorial hall whose politics are still argued out on its plaza, a park that carries a date most citizens can name without hesitation, working churches on quiet lanes, a courthouse that has spent decades in the same building, a former president's house you walk past without knowing. Skip the temple-hopping checklist most guidebooks push. Taipei rewards the walker who lingers in Zhongzheng and Zhongshan, who follows the arts up to the concert hall, who understands that in this city, memory is architecture. What follows is twelve stops we would send you to first: monuments, cathedrals, civic buildings, one very good park. They are grouped by proximity, weighted by significance, and chosen for what each teaches you about how Taipei sees itself — not for what looks best on a phone. Bring comfortable shoes. Read the plaques. Go in the order given if you have a full day; take the first three if you have half of one.