Tainan

Tainan was the capital of Taiwan for over two hundred years and it wears that history openly. The Dutch East India Company built Fort Zeelandia here in the 1620s, Koxinga took it in 1662, and the Qing and Japanese periods each left their own layers of building. What survives is a low-rise city of narrow lanes and an extraordinary density of temples, several hundred of them, from the vast Confucius Temple compound to shrines tucked between shopfronts. The other reason people come is food. Tainan is where Taiwanese small eats were codified, and dishes like danzai noodles, coffin bread, milkfish congee and shrimp rolls are associated with specific streets and stalls that have been in the same families for generations. Eating your way across the old city is a legitimate itinerary here.

What you actually see

• Anping Fort - the site of Dutch Fort Zeelandia, with surviving wall sections and a lookout tower.
• Anping Tree House - a former warehouse consumed by banyan roots, now walkable on catwalks.
• Confucius Temple - Taiwan's first, founded 1665, in a shaded compound of halls.
• Guohua Street food lanes - the concentration of long-established small-eats stalls.

When to go

October to April for dry, mild weather. Summer is intensely hot and humid. Temple festivals cluster around the lunar calendar and are worth checking; the Yanshui beehive fireworks festival nearby is spectacular and genuinely hazardous.

Honest expectations

Tainan is flat and hot, the sights are spread across the city, and public transport is thin, so the practical options are bicycle, scooter or a lot of taxi rides. Many famous food stalls keep short and irregular hours and close on rotating days, so a fixed list will produce disappointments. Come hungry and be flexible.

Nearby

Kaohsiung is under an hour south; the Sicao green tunnel mangrove waterway is on the city's western edge.