The island’s universities are often overlooked landmarks, home to captivating and historic displays that mix educational prestige and cultural depth.

High-quality education tops the priority list for Taiwanese people. But despite the value placed on learning, the actual campuses where learning takes place attract comparatively little attention – non-students usually set foot on school grounds for recreational jogging or dog walking purposes.

Although Taiwan’s schools and colleges may not boast the awe-inspiring history or architecture of Europe’s 13th-century universities, they are home to several little-known yet highly accessible gems that are equally worthy of exploration. With the exception of one, all the attractions mentioned in this article offer free admission.

National Taiwan University (NTU)

NTU’s ten specialist museums are never as crowded as the National Palace Museum, granting the freedom to absorb all that the exhibits have to offer. The main campus’ Gallery of National Taiwan University History in the heart of Taipei is an excellent place to start.

The gallery occupies part of the school’s 95-year-old former library and includes several bilingual presentations, one of which features an autonomous underwater vehicle developed by staff and students in 1992.

If you are curious about the tension between intellectuals and the authoritarian regime that ruled Taiwan for decades, you’ve found the right place. The gallery offers insights into student protest movements, the “philosophy department incident” (臺大哲學系事件) – a series of actions aimed at purging liberal scholars under the guise of “anti-communism” – and other significant events in Taiwan’s history.

The university also hosts a slew of science-centric museums. The Insect Museum is no bigger than a classroom yet packed with fascinating tidbits. In addition to learning about insect behavior and communities, as well as how bugs perceive color, visitors can see the various methods researchers use to catch insects. Many of the over 50,000 insect species found in Taiwan are endemic, which explains the multitude of specimens inside glass cases, each bearing binomial scientific names that end in taiwanensis or formosanus.

The Museum of Medical Humanities is on the Renai Road-side of NTU’s College of Medicine. In addition to acknowledging work done in 19th-century Taiwan by Western missionaries, the museum profiles local pioneers like Tu Tsung-ming. Tu’s research was wide-ranging, from studies on opium addiction to snake-venom toxicology.

Time-pressed visitors approaching from the Gongguan metro station can head directly to the Museum of Anthropology. The museum’s collection hosts thousands of artifacts obtained and cataloged in the 1895-1945 Japanese colonial period by ethnologists hired to help the Japanese colonial government better understand and thus control Taiwan’s indigenous inhabitants. The curators adeptly tie the past to the present, for example by linking the weaving traditions of the Amis people to modern concerns about plastic pollution.

National Tsing Hua University

Taiwan’s last nuclear power station is due to shut down next year, but there are no plans to decommission the island’s only research reactor. The Tsing Hua Open-pool Reactor (Thor) is located on the main campus of National Tsing Hua University, about six kilometers southwest of Hsinchu’s high-speed railway station.

Assembled using General Electric (GE) components between 1958 and 1961, Thor cost over US$1 million (about US$12 million today when adjusted for inflation). American subsidies covered a third of the price tag.

Compared to other power stations, Thor is puny, being rated at just 2 megawatts. In contrast, each of the two units at the Maanshan Nuclear Power Plant has a nameplate capacity of 951 megawatts. This significant difference in scale makes research reactors like Thor far less of a potential safety risk. Even if the entire 300,000-liter cooling pool evaporated and other safety mechanisms failed, the temperatures in the core wouldn’t approach the 1,000-plus degrees Celsius at which a meltdown might occur.

Thor tours can be arranged through its website. Visitors can peer down into the cooling pool or pose with a finger hovering over the red “SCRAM” button, which initiates emergency shutdowns from the control room. They’ll also learn about a promising experimental cancer treatment called Boron Neutron Capture Therapy (BNCT). Hundreds of treatment irradiations on tumor patients from Taiwan and overseas have been carried out here since 2010.

National Taipei University of Technology (Taipei Tech)

Taipei Tech has done a great deal to beautify its 495-acre campus. Many of the buildings – including those named in honor of Chiang Kai-shek and Sun Yat-sen – are dreary, but the abundance of foliage makes this an attractive spot to explore.

When it comes to sustainable campuses, Taipei Tech is a pioneer. Since the 1980s, the school has been adding greenery and enhancing the permeability of outdoor flat surfaces. Paving blocks designed in-house, made from waste glass and fly ash, permit rainwater to seep into the ground. This feature not only reduces pressure on the municipal drainage system but also cools the air through evaporation.

Commuters emerging from exits 4 or 5 of the Zhongxiao Xinsheng metro station will immediately notice Taipei Tech’s eco-waterscape. Fed by rainwater harvested on campus, this 85-meter long stream has developed into a complex hydrological environment where the speed and depth of the water vary, allowing organisms to breed, thrive, and conceal themselves. Seventeen dragonfly species have been spotted here.

Another point of interest for the ecologically minded is Taipei Tech’s Experimental Forest. Established with help from the Taiwan Forestry Research Institute and funding from the Ministry of Education’s University Social Responsibility budget, the forest hosts a selection of the island’s 700-plus fern species.

The university’s most elegant building is the Red House. It was completed in 1926, when Taiwan was a colony of Japan and the school was known as Taipei Prefecture Industrial Institute, and built to mark the 25th anniversary of Emperor Taisho’s marriage.

This two-floor brick-and-timber structure was designed, built, and outfitted by teachers and students in the institute’s architecture, civil engineering, and electrical engineering departments. Originally serving as a reading room before being converted into a staff dormitory, the Red House now keeps Chinese language displays about Taipei Tech’s history.

National Cheng Kung University (NCKU)

Few non-students enter NCKU’s campus to admire its hallowed halls dating back to the 1895-1945 period of Japanese occupation or look around what’s considered one of Taiwan’s most energy-efficient buildings.

A section of Tainan’s 19th-century defensive wall has been preserved within the Kuang-Fu Campus, on the western side of Shengli Road. The fortified entrance here is in fact the Minor West Gate, which before 1970 stood on the other side of the city center. The structure was dismantled and rebuilt here when it got in the way of a road widening project.

The Kuang-Fu and Li-Hsing campuses, which are separated by Xiaodong Road, were originally Imperial Japanese Army barracks. One of the most dignified of the brick buildings constructed between 1910 and 1917 now houses the Department of Taiwanese Literature.

The charming 90-year-old Ge-Chi Hall stands directly behind the NCKU Museum (closed for renovation until mid-2025). Several decades ago, the hall was nicknamed “the slaughterhouse” by science and engineering majors who took calculus and physics exams here. They joked that the shallow ponds on either side were formed by the tears of frustrated students.

With its thin red columns and light blue ledges, the Magic School of Green Technologies is more colorful than any of NCKU’s colonial-era edifices. Soon after its completion in 2011, it received the highest possible certifications under the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED rating system and Taiwan’s homegrown EEWH building rating system.

The school demonstrates several key principles of sustainable architecture in tropical environments, namely excellent ventilation to reduce interior temperatures and overhangs to reduce heat gain on sunny days. Among other features are solar chimneys (vertical shafts that use the heat of the sun to enhance airflow inside the building) and a rooftop garden planted with drought-resistant plants.

Whimsical details like the giant ladybird that clings to the building’s photovoltaic array shouldn’t be seen as suggesting a lack of seriousness. NCKU’s emphasis on sustainability has been recognized in the Times Higher Education University Impact Rankings, which evaluate universities throughout the world against the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Last year, NCKU placed joint 24th overall out of 735 institutions from 93 countries and regions – higher than any other university in Taiwan.

Honorable Mentions

Aletheia University receives its stream of tourists, in part because it’s sandwiched between some of Tamsui’s most popular attractions. The main reason to visit this church-affiliated university is Oxford College, which takes its name not from the famous British university but from Oxford County in Ontario, where funds for its construction were raised by George Leslie Mackay, founder of the Presbyterian Church in the north of the island.

Mackay’s charming design incorporates elements of Western ecclesiastical architecture, but the materials are entirely Eastern. The bricks were fired in Fujian and then laid using a mix of glutinous rice, sand, brown sugar, and lime. In 1884, just two years after its completion, the college suffered damage during the Sino-French War. Historical photos and documents chronicling these events are preserved inside.

Another missionary-inspired landmark is the 99-year-old Octagonal Tower on the campus of Tamkang Senior High School, 300 meters east of Oxford College. It was conceived by George William Mackay (1882-1963), Tamkang’s founder and the youngest child of George Leslie Mackay. While visitors aren’t encouraged, calling the school with a compelling reason to take a closer look at this piece of the past might prove effective.

Before he rose to fame, China-born American superstar architect I.M. Pei worked on the design of Taiwan’s most recognizable churches. Luce Memorial Chapel stands on the grounds of Tunghai University in Taichung. Named after Henry W. Luce, an American missionary in China and father of magazine magnate Henry R. Luce, this 450-seat hall of worship has been compared to a tepee and the prow of a sinking ship.

The chapel was completed in 1963, before concrete became the default construction material in Taiwan, yet Pei insisted on a reinforced-concrete structure optimized to survive earthquakes. The graceful curvature has been attributed to Pei’s Taiwanese co-designer Chen Chi-kwan, who by the 1990s was a renowned painter.

Architecture aficionados touring Taichung might want to add Asia University in Wufeng District to their itinerary. The Greek/Roman-style Administration Building is on the western side of Liufeng Road. On the eastern side, the Asia University Museum of Modern Art is an even more impressive statement by the university’s founders of their commitment to the school and boosting its profile.

The museum was the first building in Taiwan designed by Tadao Ando, who won the 1995 Pritzker Prize, an illustrious honor for architects. The Japanese architect has written about choosing an equilateral triangle for the museum’s basic shape.

While apparently simple, “when stacked and slightly offset to create a three-dimensional structure, the triangle creates a complex and dynamic series of spaces and views,” he explains in an introduction posted near the entrance. The principal exhibition changes once or twice a year, with a showcase of paintings and other works by Beijing-based artist Wang Huaiqing running until October 2024.