Chiayi Attractions
15 Best Places to Visit

Twenty-eight Japanese-era cypress-wood dormitory buildings on 3.4 hectares — originally housing forestry bureau officials during the colonial period, restored and reopened in 2014 as a cultural and creative village. The scent of aged hinoki (Japanese cypress) drifts through the lanes even on a still day. Inside the wooden buildings: independent cafes, pottery galleries, design shops, and a restaurant serving Japanese-inflected Taiwanese food. The architecture is immaculate — wide verandas, latticed windows, moss-covered stone paths.

Built in 1913, Beimen is the most photogenic railway station in southern Taiwan — a warm brown wooden building surrounded by old-growth trees, still functioning as the city terminus for the Alishan Forest Railway. The narrow-gauge (762 mm) trains departing from here begin one of the world's great mountain railway journeys, climbing 2,000 metres through 50 tunnels and 77 bridges in around 2.5 hours. Even if you are not riding the train, the station building and forecourt are genuinely worth the 15-minute walk from Chiayi TRA.

A 26.8-hectare civic park anchored by the 40-metre Sun-Shooting Tower (射日塔), whose name references the Tsou indigenous legend of an archer who shot down an extra sun to save the world from scorching heat. The tower's design echoes a sacred Alishan cypress. Inside: an exhibition on Chiayi's Showa-era Japanese history and a panoramic top floor. The surrounding park holds koi ponds, a botanical section, and cherry trees that bloom in February and March.

Built in 1919, this is the best-preserved Japanese colonial prison in Taiwan — cell blocks, interrogation rooms, execution chamber, and guard towers all intact and open to visitors. Guided tours are led by docents dressed in prisoner uniforms who walk you through the facility's history and explain the colonial justice system. It sounds grim but the atmosphere is more absorbing than distressing — a rare chance to understand what political detention looked like in Taiwan during the Japanese era. Tours run twice daily and must be booked in advance.

Opened in November 2020 inside the beautifully restored shell of a 1936 Japanese tobacco factory, this is the centrepiece of Chiayi's cultural renaissance. The city has a long-standing reputation as Taiwan's "city of painters" — a tradition that dates back to Japanese-era artists trained at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts. The museum's permanent collection showcases Chiayi-connected artists across generations, alongside rotating contemporary exhibitions. The ground floor Eslite bookstore is open every day and worth a browse even if you skip the galleries.

Chiayi's principal night market and the best place in Taiwan to eat turkey rice (火雞肉飯) — pulled turkey meat in a sweetish savoury sauce over rice, served with house-pickled cucumber, for NT$40–60 a bowl. The dish is genuinely distinct from the pork-based lu rou fan found everywhere else in Taiwan, and eating it here rather than a tourist restaurant in Taipei is worth the detour alone. Beyond turkey rice: stinky tofu, grilled squid, peanut milk tofu, and the local mochi variant stuffed with red bean paste.

An open-air museum of retired narrow-gauge rolling stock adjacent to Beimen Station: steam and diesel locomotives, inspection cars, sugar-cane wagons, and a working turntable that staff still use to reverse locomotives. The centrepiece is a large mosaic mural titled "Song of the Forest" depicting the Alishan line's century of history. Free admission and a 2-minute walk from Beimen Station makes this an easy add-on to any visit to the station area. Railway enthusiasts should budget 45–60 minutes here.

A 2-square-kilometre reservoir ringed by low wooded hills on the eastern edge of Chiayi City — the morning and evening light here is genuinely beautiful, with the surface turning copper-gold at sunset and pale mist rising off the water at dawn. A flat lakeside path runs most of the circuit, popular with Chiayi residents for cycling and jogging. A wooden pier extends over the water for photography. No tourist infrastructure, no entry fee — exactly the kind of local spot that feels like a discovery when you find it. Best reached by taxi from TRA Station.

A private museum housed in an old lumber warehouse, displaying over 600 restored decorative floor tiles from the Japanese colonial period (1920s–1940s). The tiles — pressed concrete squares with vibrant floral, animal, and geometric patterns — were once common in wealthy Taiwanese homes but were ripped out and discarded during renovations from the 1960s onward. Founder Lin Tian-fu spent decades collecting and painstakingly restoring them from debris. The museum is as much about cultural rescue as display. Small, personal, and genuinely moving.

The original 1913 station building — a European Baroque/Renaissance facade with a central clock tower and arched brick colonnade — is a legitimate architectural attraction, not merely a transit hub. The building has been maintained in original condition far better than most of Taiwan's heritage stations. In the morning, food stalls selling turkey rice and scallion pancakes set up along the approach road, making the station forecourt feel like a proper town centre. Worth arriving 20 minutes early just to photograph the facade in good light.

Opened in 2015 in Taibao City, 15 km west of Chiayi, this branch of the National Palace Museum takes a deliberately pan-Asian focus: South Asian textiles, Southeast Asian decorative arts, Islamic ceramics, and tea culture artifacts sit alongside the Chinese imperial collection. The building by Artech Architects is one of Taiwan's most dramatic — a series of curved forms surrounded by a reflecting pool and water garden that shift colour through the day. With a fraction of Taipei's visitor numbers, you can actually spend time in front of individual objects without a crowd.

One of the most important Mazu temples in Taiwan, founded in 1700 and drawing over a million worshippers annually. The temple complex is a riot of colour and texture — ceramic dragons covering every roofline, incense smoke perpetually drifting through the main hall, red lanterns by the hundred, and the constant drone of prayer. The surrounding Old Street sells traditional sugar-cane sweets, sesame candy, and the local glutinous rice ball in lard-sugar sauce that pilgrims have been eating here for centuries. The Mazu procession in the third lunar month is among Taiwan's great religious events.

The coastal town of Budai, 25 km west of Chiayi, offers an unlikely combination: traditional salt pyramid fields, the Haomeiliao wetland bird reserve, a working fishing harbour with excellent fresh seafood, and the "Glass High-Heel Wedding Church" — a 17-metre structure built from 320 Tiffany-blue stained-glass panels in the shape of a stiletto heel. Built as a venue attraction and now genuinely famous worldwide through social media. The salt fields and wetlands surrounding it give the area an otherworldly quality, especially at sunrise when the sky reflects in the flat water.

Reclaimed in 2000 from sugar-cane farmland originally drained in the 1960s, Aogu Wetland is now one of the most significant bird habitats in western Taiwan — a 1,500-hectare reserve of reed beds, tidal flats, and freshwater ponds hosting over 200 recorded species. During the October–March migratory season, black-faced spoonbills, great egrets, painted storks, and bar-tailed godwits are common sightings. A golf-cart tour runs circuits of the reserve with a naturalist guide. Quiet, genuinely wild, and almost completely unknown to foreign tourists.

A mid-mountain stop on the Alishan Forest Railway at 1,403 metres elevation — a small town perpetually draped in cloud, best known for two things: the "railway box lunch" (鐵路便當), a bamboo-tray bento of rice, pickled vegetables, pork, and a soy egg eaten on the train as it winds through cedar forest; and "tofu burger," a thick slab of grilled firm tofu in a sesame bun that locals have been selling for decades. The Old Street itself is compact (about 200 metres) but the mountain setting, cool air, and slow pace make a half-day stopover genuinely worthwhile on the way to or from Alishan.