Local Attractions

National Palace Museum
The National Palace Museum, the pride of Taiwan, ranks as one of the four best museums in the world, in a class with the Louvre, the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The museum is built in traditional Chinese palace style with white walls and green-tiled roofs. The museum holds the largest collection of Chinese artifacts in the world, around 700,000 items in all. Some of the oldest artifacts in the collection are pieces of prehistoric pottery over 5,000 years old. The vast majority of these art objects are from the private collection of China's emperors. Because the museum only has space to display around 15,000 pieces at any given time, the majority of the treasures are kept well protected in air-conditioned vaults buried deep in the mountainside. The displays are rotated once every three months. In other words, around 60,000 pieces can be viewed in a year and it would take nearly 12 years to see all collections.

For more information, please check the Web site of NPM by http://www.npm.gov.tw/en/home.htm

Taipei Fine Arts Museum
        
Taipei Fine Arts Museum is the largest modern art museum in all of Asia. It is also the only museum in Taiwan devoted to the promotion and display of modern art. The museum building is magnificent and unique. It creates an environment composed of both artistic architecture and a natural courtyard, corresponding to the aim and feature of the building project. The architecture is infused with elements borrowed from traditional Chinese architecture, presented through the structure of piled brackets and the form of suspended corridors, altogether assembled under the tube-shape composition. The tube-shape is identical to the Chinese character which means fountain; hence the museum's analogue to a live source of culture. Symmetrical and suspended gallery spaces spread on each floor to form a new space for viewing art. 

To the museum's left extends ZhongShan N. Road, generally titled as "national road", for it is the indispensable route taken by all the foreign leaders who visit the country. The museum's location is easily accessible and can be reached by way of metro or bus. The official Web site of Taipei Fine Arts Museum: http://www.tfam.museum/Index.aspx .

Lin An-Tai Historical Home
Lin An-Tai Historical Home is located on the opposite side of Taipei Fine Arts Museum. To  think of his origin, a great trader, Lin, Hui-kung decided to name his house as "An Tai". It has been one of the oldest house existed in Taipei City now. It was built about more than 200 years ago, which had been a very refined 2-partitioned and 5-annex old house with a square situated in the north facing the south. Once facing with a destiny of being taken apart, the historical house, after the successful reconstruction, was opened to the public in the year 2000.

Taipei International Financial Center (Taipei 101)
Taipei 101 (also known as the Taipei Financial Center) is a 101-floor landmark skyscraper located in Taipei City and reaches 1,667 ft (508 m) high. Taipei 101, open to the public on December 31, 2004, is currently the official world's tallest building in the categories of highest structurally, highest roof, and highest occupied floor. This multiuse steel-and-glass skyscraper echoes a traditional Chinese pagoda with its soaring podium base, eight tiers of eight stories (a number that is a homophone for prosperous growth in Chinese), and narrow pinnacle tower and spire. Designing a building this large presented unique challenges because Taiwan is subject to typhoons and earthquakes. To counter movement, a tuned mass damper system has been incorporated into the structure. The 800-metric ton (1,764,000 lbs), spherical steel mass is located on level 88 and will be visible from the restaurant and observation decks. The system transfers the energy from the building to the swinging sphere, providing a stabilizing force. Please refer to http://www.taipei-101.com.tw/ for details.

Taipei Zoo
Taipei Zoo is considered to be the largest zoo in Asia. It has a total area of 182 hectares, with both indoor and outdoor exhibits. Taipei Zoo has endeavored to keep up with global standards and to provide an educational environment for wildlife conservation in Taiwan. The zoo is divided into different sections according to the characteristics of the animals. For example, in the contact section, people can pat and hold lovely and harmless animals and poultry. In the bird section, there are 135 species and 1200 birds. The African section has some of the largest animals in the zoo. The Australian section has koalas and kangaroos. The desert section has different species of desert animals. For opening hours and ticket information, please refer to http://english.taipei.gov.tw/zoo/index.jsp .

There are more attractions spanning across nature, history, recreation, culture and gourmet in Taipei. Please follow the links below for the discovery of Taipei.
http://www.taipeitravel.net/
http://eng.taiwan.net.tw/