Taiwan’s former capital has reached a historic milestone, inviting visitors far and wide to a year of events and activities that reflect on the city’s rich history and diverse influences.

Marking its 400th anniversary since the Dutch East India Company’s (VOC) arrival, Tainan is celebrating its quadricentennial with a series of yearlong events under the banner “Tainan 400.”

Anping, a coastal suburb of modern-day Tainan, was the site of the Dutch’s first trading base on the main island of Taiwan after they were booted off Penghu by the Chinese in 1624. The construction of Fort Zeelandia and the emergence of the adjacent Zeelandia City effectively gave rise to Tainan, Taiwan’s first city and capital for several hundred years.

Under Tainan 400, the city is hosting a number of exhibitions on culture, art, and agriculture. It’s also prompted the inevitable slew of official Tainan 400 merchandise – specialty beers, snacks, cosmetics, and even flip-flops. But it’s not just one big party, Tainan Mayor Huang Wei-che stresses that Tainan 400 isn’t just one big party but rather an opportunity to learn from the past and do better in the future.

“The spirit of Taiwan 400 is not just a one-off celebration,” he says. “We would like [to use it] to reflect on our history.”

In a list of events for the second half of the year provided by the city’s Cultural Affairs Bureau (see table), two planned exhibitions focus on Indigenous peoples, including the Siraya, who were living in the area long before the Dutch arrived.

Huang notes that the Dutch were not the only ones who invaded Taiwan. “We have been occupied many times since,” he says, referencing Ming loyalist Koxinga, the Qing Dynasty, Japan, and then China’s retreating Kuomintang troops. “There have been so many influences, and they are all overlayered.”

Huang adds that as an open democratic society, Taiwan can objectively assess its history. Past invaders have inflicted harm, such as slaughtering indigenous peoples, but also contributed positively by constructing railways and reservoirs. “We need to face the bad while also accepting the good.”

Whether you take Tainan 400 as a cause for celebration or one for reflection, it’s one more reason among many to visit Taiwan’s oldest city. After all, Tainan has long been a favorite with domestic tourists, famed for its cuisine, temples, historical buildings, and culture. Most recently, it made CNN’s 2024 “Best Places to Visit” and National Geographic’s “The Cool List 2024.”

“We are no longer the capital, but we still play an important role as the country’s cultural capital,” Huang says.

Below is a tour of Tainan’s top sites, tracing the footsteps of its various invaders. We start, of course, with the Dutch.

Delving into the Dutch

Four hundred years is a long time, so not much physical remains of the Dutch legacy.

However, you should definitely head over to the remains of Fort Zeelandia or Old Anping Fort, as it’s known today, where a sizeable chunk of the outer fort’s south wall is still standing. Look closely, and you will spot the Dutch-style masonry of the time, which used alternating long and short red bricks laid in a single course to avoid gaps, making the construction more stable. Mottled with age, the wall is pockmarked and laced with vines and tree roots, bearing visible imprints of anchors used during maritime bustle long past.

There are some excellent exhibits and short films in the Zeelandia City Museum – the white villa adjacent to the wall remnant – produced especially for Tainan 400. One uses a light-and-shadow show and sounds to mimic an indigenous hunt; another has animations of life in Zeelandia projected onto a diorama. The English used is mostly good. For the longer, solely Chinese explanations, Google Lens is your friend!

The snappily named “Unveiling the 17th-Century Fort Zeelandia APP” uses augmented reality to enhance the experience at eight different sites in and around the fort. Users can view computerized reconstructions of what the scenes would have looked like 400 years ago. This project was done by scholars from National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) and the university’s museum.

Downtown, you can view English-subtitled works about Zeelandia, also created by the NCKU team, at the library located behind the lobby of Silks Place, an upscale hotel in central Tainan. You don’t need to be a guest to watch. One of the films shows similar animations of life in Zeelandia as the app, highlighting the very public gallows that stood ominously in the open ground between the fort and the city.

In 1653, the Dutch expanded their presence in Taiwan by building a second fort, Provintia, several kilometers inland in what is today’s downtown Tainan. They bought the land from indigenous settlers for the price of 500 meters of fabric. The fort is more commonly known today by its Chinese name, Chì kàn lóu (赤崁樓) or Chihkan Tower.

Over the ensuing decades, various battles and an earthquake destroyed much of the original stonework during the Qing Dynasty. The remnants were later repurposed into temples and pavilions. Unfortunately, even though some of the Dutch-built walls and arches remain, the bulk of the site is as of July under scaffolding. If you peer between the bars behind Haishen Temple (which is open), you can just see the Dutch foundations of one building. An ambitious reconstruction project is underway, with one part (which should include those foundations) set to be completed later this year. Additional phases are underway for the coming years.

If you do visit, come at night as the lights go on, and the setting becomes magical. The gates close at 9:30 p.m.

Both tourist sites stock Tainan 400 merchandise in their souvenir shops. A special commemorative craft beer by local brewer Taiwind Beer (台風造酒, Táifēng zàojiǔ) comes in two flavors – peach and pineapple. I opted for the peach, which at 5% has legs and has a dry, fruity tang. There are two potato-based snacks adorned with reproductions of the classic paintings “Girl with a Pearl Earring” and “Maid pouring milk” by Dutch master Johannes Vermeer.

There are many other novelty snacks where marketers appear to have let their creativity run wild with the branding. Grand Matsu Puffs in strawberry and milk varieties, two types of Chenggong (Koxinga) beer, Confucius snack noodles, and Baosheng Dadi Probiotic Jelly (Baosheng Dadi is the medicine god) are offered in festive abundance.

Over at the freshly refurbished Tainan City Museum (next to the Koxinga Shrine) visitors will find another legacy of the Dutch: a page from the Bible’s “Gospel of Matthew,” one half in Dutch and the other in transliterated Siraya. The Dutch were the first to convert the spoken language of the Taiwanese indigenous Siraya people into text – ostensibly to proselytize.

“When the Dutch were here, it wasn’t only soldiers or merchants, there were also missionaries, who were working to convert people – especially the Siraya,” says Cheryl Robbins, co-author of The Real Taiwan and the Dutch, a book she wrote with Menno Goedhart, the former Netherlands representative to Taiwan. “They wrote down the Siraya language in order to teach the bible.”

In recent years, scholars have successfully recreated the Siraya language, which had previously died out, using these religious texts. What the Dutch did 400 years ago ended up helping the Siraya today. By regaining their lost language, they have strengthened their case to be recognized at the national level, explains Robbins. Currently, they only have city-level recognition.

Tracing the Tungning Kingdom

Zheng Chenggong, prince of Yanping, better known internationally as Koxinga, was a Southern Ming general who in 1661 defeated the Dutch outposts on Taiwan and established the House of Koxinga, which ruled part of the island as the Kingdom of Tungning.

Koxinga was born in 1624, the year the Dutch came to Taiwan, so this year is his 400th birthday, too! Although he perished, most likely from malaria, just months after kicking the Dutch out, his kingdom lasted from 1661 until 1683 when the Qing emperor annexed it.

There are several statues of Koxinga in Tainan. The funkiest is in the entrance hall of Tainan City Museum. Taiwanese sculptor Ho Heng-hsiung’s “Surrender” (1965) is a magnificent cubist rendition of Koxinga standing an imposing 3.5-meter tall as he accepts the VOC’s capitulation. Contrast that with the somber-throned king in the Main Hall of the Koxinga Shrine next door and the armored warrior mounted on a muscular stone horse in the grounds just outside the shrine. The shrine is a mellow haven with scarlet Confucian temple-like walls and a turquoise-tiled roof that glitters in the sun.

Checking out the Qing

Shennong Street is Tainan’s answer to Taipei’s Dihua Street, albeit much narrower and shorter. At night, when the paper lanterns are illuminated, it’s rather atmospheric. This former row of Qing-dynasty shophouses used to bustle with merchants as it was the entry point for water-borne trade and traffic. Today, it bustles with tourists. The canals have receded, and many of the establishments have been reworked into craft shops, boutiques, cafes, and B&Bs.

Journey to Japan

Some of the best-preserved historical sites in Tainan date from the Japanese era, and what makes them such a pleasure to visit is that many are still functional, operating as shops, cafés, and museums.
Top of the list is the Hayashi Department Store, a five-story Art Deco emporium built in 1932 and lovingly restored about a decade ago. On the first floor, shoppers can find elegantly packaged food items, such as bags of purple-colored red dragon fruit noodles and vintage tins of butter cookies. The second through fourth floors feature high-quality gifts typical of Taiwan’s tourist shops, including purses, bags, booklets, scarves, and trinkets.

Meanwhile, the rooftop Hayashi Café provides a delightful setting for enjoying drinks and cakes among potted ferns and Tiffany lamps. I had the “Traditional pudding with Macaron,” an intensely creamy crème brulée-like dessert paired with a pleasantly fluffy sponge.

Ascend one more flight to discover Taiwan’s only department store Shinto shrine and pockmarked scars caused by an Allied bomb during World War II.

An honorable mention goes to Tin Drum, a small and immensely popular café (reservations advised) in a lovingly restored Japanese villa. This charming spot features wooden flooring, tatami mats, period furniture, and sliding paned doors. Light filters down through the trees in the garden and casts a warm glow in the dim interior. The coffee is excellent, too.

Not discounting the Kuomintang

While much of the urban monstrosity common to Taiwan’s cities is a legacy of its authoritarian years, Tainan does offer some charming pockets of recent history worth visiting. If you have time, check out a movie at Chuan Mei Theater, which dates back to the 1950s. It’s easy to spot by the huge hand-painted billboards on the front façade. The cinema’s website claims director Ang Lee is a former regular customer. If you’re lucky, you might catch the theater’s artist painting the next movie poster from his open workspace across the street.

Where to stay

If you’re after a bit of luxury, Silks Place Tainan offers hushed, cushiony comfort in the southern part of the central western district next to the Shin Kong Mitsukoshi shopping complex. Its northwest-facing rooms have sweeping views of the city, including the chance to catch a magnificent, fiery sunset. Amenities include a decent hotel gym, an outdoor pool, and a giant buffet breakfast spread of both Eastern and Western food.

A few blocks north and opposite Tainan Art Museum Building 2 is the U.I.J. Hotel & Hostel. This boutique establishment, which offers private rooms and dorms, has a strong hipster vibe. Décor is vintage industrial, with open brickwork and exposed metal piping. Some rooms have Crosley record players – the hotel keeps a vinyl library, and guests can borrow LPs to play in their rooms. The retro look is completed with an assortment of artifacts, such as a painted confessional booth, wooden school gym equipment, and slinky mid-century modern armchairs that look like they’re straight out of Mad Men.