Taipei for first-time visitors
Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall is a morning on the plaza and an unhurried tour of what the exhibitions carry beneath it. The earliest of the picks for first-time visitors in Taipei opens at 06:00 and the latest closes at midnight.
Taipei for first-timers, in numbers
- Picks on this page
- 24 places across 2 lists, led by Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, 228 Peace Memorial Park, Chungshan Church
- Posted hours
- 8 picks post hours earliest 06:00, latest 24:00; 1 open by 09:00, 7 past 21:00
Questions first-timers ask about Taipei
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Must-see
The National Palace Museum in Shilin. Its 697,000 Chinese imperial artifacts were shipped from Beijing's Forbidden City in 1948, and no other museum holds this collection. Admission is NT$350, about $11 USD. Weekday mornings before 10am give you the Jadeite Cabbage gallery without the tour-bus crowds.
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Best time to visit
Book late October or November. Daytime highs in Taipei settle between 23 and 27°C, typhoon season is over after mid-October, and November rainfall is about a third of September's. Avoid July through September unless you can afford to lose a day to a typhoon. March and April are the next-best choice, bringing spring flowers to Yangmingshan but frequent drizzle with them.
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Airport to city
Take the Taoyuan Airport MRT Express from TPE to Taipei Main Station. It costs 160 TWD ($5) and takes 35 minutes, with trains every 15 minutes from 6:00am to 11:00pm. After midnight, the Kuo-Kuang 1819 bus runs 24 hours for 140 TWD ($4.30). Taxis cost 1,200 to 1,500 TWD ($37-46).
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How to get there
Taipei Taoyuan International Airport (TPE), 40 km west of the city, handles nearly all international flights. EVA Air and China Airlines fly nonstop from Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York. The Taoyuan Airport MRT runs every 15 minutes to Taipei Main Station in 35 minutes for NT$160 (about $5).
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Getting around
EasyCard on the MRT handles 90% of Taipei transit. Six color-coded lines run from 6am to midnight, fares NT$20-65 per ride. Load one at any 7-Eleven for a NT$100 refundable deposit. YouBike 2.0 docks appear every 300 meters for the last stretch. LINE Taxi or Uber for anything after the trains stop.
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Curated for first-timers
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Must-see attractions
Taipei's must-see list is less a skyline than a run of rooms where the city keeps its faiths and its arguments. These twelve stops take you from a Taoist temple in the Beitou District that dates from 1712 to a Guanyin temple in Wanhua from 1738, a mosque from 1947, a Catholic church from 1961, a national museum from 1908, a memorial hall from 1980, and a performing arts centre from 1987. Two of the twelve carry a Country-level monument designation. This list suits the visitor who wants to see how many congregations share one city, and who will plan around opening hours: Hsing Tian Kong opens at 04:00, the National Taiwan Museum is closed on Mondays, and the Confucian Temple closes at 17:00 on Sundays. Dress for prayer halls, keep your voice down, and build each day around the clock, not the map.
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Best restaurants
Taipei eats late and eats seriously. The city's dining rooms are stacked into department-store basements, tucked down lane numbers you have to hunt for, and strung along the arteries of Xinyi and Da'an where the office crowd empties out at 18:00 and the ramen shops brace for it. This list is twelve restaurants you can find on a map: every one of them mapped in OpenStreetMap, addressed to a specific number on a specific 巷 or 段, phone answered in Mandarin. What it is not: a chase after Michelin stars or the influencer queue of the month. What it is: European rooms open past 23:00, buffet halls that run three seatings before dinner, an Indian kitchen closed Mondays because the chef says so, a burger counter down a Tonghua Street alley, and the ramen shop that anchors an alley off Zhongxiao East. Pick by hour, by neighbourhood, by what you feel like eating. The addresses are exact. The rest is up to you.
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