25+ Best Things to Do in Taipei (2026): The Complete List

Taipei 101 anchors the Xinyi district and is the obvious starting point — once the world's tallest building, it still holds one of the better city views in Asia from its 89th-floor observatory, and the tuned mass damper visible through glass on one of the upper floors is a genuinely interesting piece of engineering most visitors have never seen in person. Pair a Taipei 101 visit with a short hike up Elephant Mountain (Xiangshan) nearby, which gives the reverse view — the tower itself lit up against the Taipei skyline — and is free, requiring only a steep but short climb up stone steps.

For religious and historic sites, Longshan Temple in Wanhua is the most atmospheric: a working Buddhist and Taoist temple founded in 1738, still busy with locals burning incense and praying rather than staged for tourists. Combine it with a walk through Dadaocheng and Dihua Street, Taipei's old merchant quarter of herbal medicine shops, dried-goods stalls and restored Qing-and-Japanese-era shophouses.

Night markets are not a tourist add-on in Taipei, they're how a large part of the city actually eats dinner. Shilin Night Market is the biggest and most famous, sprawling across a covered market building and surrounding streets near Jiantan MRT station, with everything from giant fried chicken cutlets to stinky tofu. Raohe Street Night Market, entered through a dramatic temple gate, is more compact and widely considered to have a stronger food-to-tourist-trap ratio. Ningxia Night Market is smaller again and leans harder into Taiwanese comfort-food classics — oyster omelets, braised pork rice, herbal soups — in a tighter, more walkable footprint than Shilin's sprawl.

None of these require a guide to enjoy, but a guided food walk is worth it on a first visit specifically to get past the language barrier at stalls and to avoid wasting stomach space on the wrong first few dishes.

Jiufen, a former gold-mining town built into a steep hillside about an hour from Taipei, is famous for its narrow lantern-lit old street and the teahouses that inspired comparisons to Hayao Miyazaki's *Spirited Away* — the resemblance is more atmosphere than direct reference, but it's real enough that the town draws heavy crowds, especially on weekends and holidays. Go on a weekday if your schedule allows it; the alleys are narrow enough that weekend crowds genuinely slow movement to a shuffle.

Most day trips pair Jiufen with Shifen, where you can release your own sky lantern over the old train tracks, and sometimes Yehliu Geopark, known for its wind-and-wave-carved rock formations including the famous 'Queen's Head'. Budget a full day for the combination rather than trying to rush all three.

Beitou, a 20-minute MRT ride from the city center, has been a hot-spring district since the Japanese colonial era, with both public bathhouses and private hotel springs fed by the same geothermal valley that still steams visibly at Beitou Thermal Valley. Maokong, reachable by a scenic gondola from Taipei Zoo station, is a tea-growing hillside with open-air teahouses looking back over the city — a slower, greener contrast to the Xinyi skyline.

For hikers, Yangmingshan National Park sits inside the city's administrative boundary yet feels like a different province entirely, with sulfur vents, grassland trails and seasonal flower blooms. See our dedicated guides to Jiufen, Beitou, Maokong and Yangmingshan for the specifics on each.