Chiang Kai-shek's 'Picks'? Taipei's Palace Museum is OVERFLOWING with Treasures! 🤯
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Wow, the National Palace Museum in Taipei is truly amazing!
It houses a large number of top-tier treasures that were brought from Beijing's Forbidden City many years ago. Although the museum doesn’t give off a particularly grand impression externally, it will still leave you impressed by its abundance of precious art pieces!However, a minor complaint: such a famous museum should have better transportation accessibility!
- No metro (called “MRT”) direct to the entrance.
- Very limited bus routes.
Nevertheless! Even despite these inconveniences, it is definitely worth going out of your way for this place!
How to get there?
Route 1:
- Take the Red Line MRT in Taipei to Sĩ Rén Station.
- After exiting the station, transfer to Bus #30R, this route directly takes you to the front of the museum.
Route 2:
- Take the Wenhua-Xilin Line MRT to Jiàn Nán Road Station.
- After exiting the station, transfer to Bus BR15.
- Get off and still have to walk about ten minutes to reach the destination.
️ Opening hours:- Tuesday to Sunday: 9am to 5pm.
- Note: Visitors can't enter after 4:30 pm.
- Monday: Closed.
Ticket price:- Full ticket: NT$350 (New Taiwan Dollar).
- Renting an audio guide set: NT$150 (New Taiwan Dollar).
Visiting tips:- The audio guide includes tour routes with different time lengths, ranging from half an hour to two hours, choose based on your own time schedule.
- The entire museum covers three floors in total and doesn't have too many exhibition halls. If you want to take things easily or just to catch the highlights, it would take around 3-4 hours to see everything.
- Strongly recommended: Start from the 3rd floor and visit down floor by floor. This creates a smoother flow path and the treasures are usually placed on upper levels.
- Don't forget to spare some time after visiting to check out the souvenir shop downstairs (known as the “cultural and creative product shop”), it offers unique items designed based on cultural relics.
During this trip, our luck was not the best: the two super famous museum treasures, the Jadeite Cabbage and the Meat Stone (a stone that looks extremely like braised pork belly) which were known as museum "stars" this time both had been sent to another place for exhibitions, it was somewhat disappointing.
Luckily, the museum’s “treasure” — the Mao Gong Tripod (a crucially significant ancient bronze tripod too heavy to move around), still remains there! Also, those extremely delicate craftsmanship items like “turning core vase” (a vase with several concentric layers that can rotate) and "ivory carved ball-in-ball” (layered ivory balls stacked together), all of them still can be seen. I really love such intricate and exquisite artifacts!#FollowYourInterestToExplore; #TravellingLikeAnAnthropologist; #Vlog; #TaiwanTravelGuide; #TaiwanTourism; #Taipei; #TaipeiSights; #NationalPalaceMuseum; #MuseumVisit; #CulturalCreativeProducts
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When did you go?
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I went in February, but the exhibition is the same.
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Hey, looking at Taipei's recent temperatures, it feels like I'll need warmer clothes. I'm heading there the day after tomorrow and was only planning on shorts and a t-shirt. Do I really need to repack everything?
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Short sleeves with a backup jacket should be fine!
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Definitely remember to visit the cultural and creative gift shop downstairs.
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I regret not buying anything there.
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There are several important items here: Ru ware porcelain... the Ming Chenghua Doucai 'chicken cup' (only 13 exist worldwide, Taipei has 8... mainland China has none)... Ding ware porcelain... Many of these pieces might look unassuming, but they are incredibly precious national treasures. There are also tons of famous calligraphy and paintings (though they weren't on display. I asked the staff, and some are only exhibited every 5-10 years, like the 'Timely Snowfall After Clearing' scroll ('Kuai Xue Shi Qing Tie')).
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I also didn't get to see the Jadeite Cabbage. There was an episode about it in the documentary series 'National Treasure Archives,' explaining how it was exquisitely carved according to the jade's natural colors and flaws – truly a work of art.
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Everything there is top-notch quality.
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I've been there twice.
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The Jadeite Cabbage is stunning, it’s such a shame I missed it.