Heritage Vogue
Heritage Walks Vol. 01
From a temple built in 1886 to a “new layer inside a historic site”:
an exhibition about restoration itself
Inside the Haishen (Sea God) Temple: translucent panels laid over 140-year-old timber and window light.
Photo: 阿道 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
— Prologue
Prologue: the hoarding has finally come down
If you visited Chihkan Tower in the past three years, you probably remember the hoarding.
Tall, green construction hoarding wrapped around the whole Haishen Temple. Plenty of people bought a ticket, photographed the red tiles and flying eaves, glanced at the nine stone tablets, then stopped in front of the hoarding –“Ah, it’s under renovation.”And they turned around and left.
The hoarding is gone now.
And not just gone.In July 2026 a brand-new permanent exhibition opened inside the Haishen Temple at Chihkan Tower. The Tainan City Cultural Affairs Bureau curated it around the idea of “a new layer inside a historic site“: without changing the building’s original proportions, translucent panels and lightweight display frames let something new grow inside a 140-year-old structure.
With this, Chihkan Tower’sthree exhibition spaces – Wenchang Pavilion, Penghu Academy and the Haishen Temple – are all complete. For the first time, this national monument tells a complete story spanning 400 years.
Here is the interesting part:it has been open for more than two months, and most people still don’t know.
Locals walk past out of habit; visitors follow old guides, photograph the exterior and leave. What this article sets out to do is simple –to tell you what is inside, and why it is worth a special trip.
Contents
Act One: a temple built for the sea
Act Two: the four years of restoration
Act Three: a new layer inside a historic site
Act Four: visiting tips – five strategies
Act Five: a half-day walk from 3 Door Hotel
Listen – audio edition (in Mandarin)
▶The Haishen Temple story in 12 minutes
If you’d rather not read 5,000 words in one go, our editor has condensedthe temple’s origins, the four-year restoration and the real highlights of the exhibitioninto one episode (in Mandarin) – for your commute, a drive or doing the housework.
The best time to listen is on the way to Chihkan Tower.It is an 8-minute walk from 3 Door Hotel and the episode runs 11 minutes 43 seconds – you’ll have heard most of it by the time you reach the gate, and you’ll know where to look first.
11:43 | Heritage Walks Vol.01 | 3 Door Hotel
— Act One
Act One: a temple built for the sea
First, let’s clear one thing up:the Haishen Temple is not Chihkan Tower.
Many people call the whole site “Chihkan Tower”, but it is reallya site built up in layers. In 1653 the Dutch builtFort Provintiahere. The fort fell, but its base survived. In1886 (the 12th year of the Guangxu Emperor), the Haishen Temple and Wenchang Pavilion were built on top of those ruins.
Under your feet is a Dutch fort; in front of you, a Qing dynasty temple. More than two centuries compressed into a single vertical cross-section.
Why build a temple to the sea god?
Because Tainan was once a port city.
Before the Taijiang Inner Sea silted up, ships came and went right here.For a city that lived by the sea and gambled with the sea, worshipping a sea god wasn’t a cultural activity – it was risk management.When a ship sailed out, nobody had a weather forecast to tell them whether it would come back.
That is why the new exhibition makes “maritime culture” the core theme of the Haishen Temple –it isn’t a concept bolted on; it is the very reason the building exists.
Chihkan Tower in the Japanese era. Compare it with today and you’ll see that a “historic site” is never static.
Wikimedia Commons, public domain
— Act Two
Act Two: the four years of restoration
This round of restoration began in 2022and went in stages –first Wenchang Pavilion, then the Haishen Temple. Only one side closed at a time, so the site stayed open throughout. It is a very practical approach to restoring a monument: visitors keep coming in, and the work still gets done.
About the nine stone tablets
In the temple’s outdoor courtyard standnine imperial tablets from the Qianlong era(known as the Bixi tablets – the bixi is the tortoise-like creature, one of the dragon’s nine sons, that carries each tablet on its back).
They were the trickiest part of the whole project.The tablets can’t be moved, and shouldn’t be– moving them is a risk in itself. So before work began in 2024, the contractors fitted the nine tablets withmultiple layers of protection, wrapping them where they stood until the work was finished.
The hardest part of restoring a monument is often not the “restoring”, but “not breaking anything else while you restore”.
The paintings on the hoarding
One more small thing. During the 2024 works, Chihkan Tower didn’t just hide its hoarding as an eyesore –it painted characters from Hsu Ping-ting’s “Little Investiture of the Gods” and the “Kun Opera” picture on it。
“Little Investiture of the Gods” is a Tainan story: the gods of Tainan’s temples battling it out in the streets of the old city. Painting it on Chihkan Tower’s hoardingturned “under restoration” into something worth looking at too.That detail later carried on, in another form, into the permanent exhibition.
Tainan Station to 3 Door Hotel: 5 minutes; 3 Door Hotel to Chihkan Tower: 8 minutes
No taxi needed with your luggage, no parking to find after the sights.
Chihkan Tower is open until 21:30 – stay within walking distance and you can see it once by day and once by night.
— Act Three
Act Three: a new layer inside a historic site
“A new layer inside a historic site” – that is the Cultural Affairs Bureau’s curatorial idea for this exhibition, and I think it’s a very good one.
The great contradiction of exhibiting inside a monument is this:you want to tell a story, but you can’t touch the building.No nails, no digging, no changing the proportions of a room just to fit a display wall. Many exhibitions in historic buildings end up as “posters stuck next to the pillars”, which does justice to neither.
The Haishen Temple’s solution:translucent panelscombined withlightweight display frames. Because the panels let light through, when you look at the exhibitsthe 140-year-old wall behind them is still there; the frames are light and reversible, and once removed the building returns to how it was. That is what “layer” means – it sits on top rather than replacing what is underneath.
Ground floor: an exhibition about restoration itself
The ground floor opens with a map:the “Map of Formosa and the Pescadores” drawn in 1870 by Charles W. Le Gendre. Le Gendre was then the US consul in Amoy (Xiamen) and spent long periods in southern Taiwan. The Taiwan he drew is“Taiwan through foreign eyes”– and that viewpoint sets the tone for the whole floor: building the Haishen Temple was never just a local matter; it was tied up with the international situation of the 19th century.
Next comethe Mudan Incident and the Sino-French War– how these two events changed Taiwan, and this city.
But the real highlight comes after. This exhibitionshows for the first time photos, manuscripts and documents from every past restoration of Chihkan Tower, tracing the work from the Japanese era through the post-war years, and includesimages from the collections of the National Museum of Taiwan History and National Cheng Kung University。
I want to stress how unusual this is. Most exhibitions in historic buildings tell you “what history happened here”; the Haishen Temple tells you “what this building itself has been through“. Manuscripts, construction photos, restoration drawings – things normally locked in archive cabinets that only researchers get to see.
A building that has just been restored, displaying the records of every time it was restored before. There is an honest beauty to that.
Upper floor: Source / Surge / Gather
The upper floor speaks a different language. Its theme is three words:“Source / Surge / Gather”– three states of water, and three relationships between this city and the sea.
Works on the upper floor
“Light and Shadow of the Currents” Weng Ting-kai Architects
A spatial installation by architects. In a temple built for the sea god, it uses light to explore the theme of ocean currents.
“Carp Lord” Wu Wen-chin
Traditionalpaper-and-bamboo effigy craft. This craft is a root of Tainan’s temple festival culture – things made of paper and bamboo frames are meant to be burned. This time, one has been kept and placed in the gallery.
The pairing is worth thinking about:one is a contemporary installation by architects, the other a traditional craft on the verge of disappearing.Putting the two on the same floor is the idea of “a new layer inside a historic site” made three-dimensional.
How the three galleries fit together
The Haishen Temple doesn’t stand alone. Chihkan Tower’s three exhibition spaces each have their role –together they tell the full 400 years：
| Gallery | Theme | What to look for |
|---|---|---|
| Wenchang Pavilion | Since Fort Provintia was founded in the Dutch period:how Tainan grew as a city | How the city became what it is |
| Penghu Academy | Throughartists’ eyes, the look and spirit of Chihkan Tower | How others see this place |
| Haishen Temple New in 2026 |
Since the 19th century:the restoration historyandmaritime culture | The building’s own life story |
Director of Cultural Affairs Huang Ya-ling noted that preserving monuments is not only about restoring buildings but about continuing their cultural life through exhibitions and education. With all three galleries complete, Chihkan Tower becomes an important cultural window onto Tainan.
Inside the Haishen Temple. Timber, window light, red tiles – the exhibition has to sit on top of these, not cover them.
Photo: 阿道 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
— Act Four
Act Four: visiting tips – five strategies
Timing: two golden slots, and one everyone overlooks
Chihkan Tower is open 08:30–21:30. That “until 21:30” is the key, because it means Chihkan Tower hasevening opening。
08:30–09:30 (most recommended)
Go in as soon as it opens. The indoor galleries are emptiest early in the morning – the only time you can really take in the manuscripts and documents.
16:30–18:00
The best light. Side light on the red tiles and flying eaves gives the nine tablets in the courtyard real depth.
19:00–21:00 (most overlooked)
At night Chihkan Tower is a different place.The buildings are lit, the crowds have gone and the cicadas fall quiet. Many people don’t know they can come in the evening – the biggest bonus of staying within walking distance.
Photography: four angles
01Low angle from the courtyard looking up at the temple Bring the flying eaves and the sky into one frame – the classic shot.
02The row of nine Bixi tablets Don’t shoot just one; shoot the whole row. The repetition is what gives it power.
03Backlit translucent panels indoors A shot that only exists since this exhibition. The panels let light through with the old wall behind, so two eras end up layered in one photo.
04The buildings lit at night Your phone’s night mode is enough. The trick is finding the angle where the pond reflects the buildings.
Tickets: Tainan residents, bring ID
| Ticket | Price and eligibility |
|---|---|
| Full price | NT$70 |
| Concession | NT$35 – students, military/police/fire personnel, over-65s, volunteers at public agencies |
| Tainan residents | Free with ID |
※ Prices and discounts as posted on site. Free entry for Tainan residents means you can come back a second or third time – seeing all three galleries in one go is rushed; two visits is about right.
Route: go against the flow
Most people go: entrance → Wenchang Pavilion → Haishen Temple → exit. We suggest the reverse:start at the Haishen Temple(the new gallery – the ground-floor documents need quiet), thenPenghu Academy, and finallyWenchang Pavilion, coming out right by the nine tablets and the pond. That way you see the gallery that needs the most concentration when it is least crowded.
Time: plan 90 minutes, not 30
Old-school guides will tell you “30 minutes is enough for Chihkan Tower”.That dates from when the hoarding was up and the three galleries weren’t finished. It is out of date.If you actually read the ground-floor manuscripts and restoration documents,the Haishen Temple alone will take 40 minutes. For all three galleries plus the courtyard, allow 90 minutes to 2 hours。
— Act Five
Act Five: a half-day walk from 3 Door Hotel
The route below isentirely on foot, starting from 3 Door Hotel (No. 77, Chenggong Road, West Central District, Tainan). West Central District is so densely packed with historic sites that walking is actually faster than driving.
| Time | Plan |
|---|---|
| 08:00 | Breakfast at 3 Door Hotel. No rush – Chihkan Tower doesn’t open until 08:30. |
| 08:40 | Set off on foot, about 8 minutes |
| 08:50 | Chihkan Tower · Haishen Temple exhibition Ground-floor documents → upper floor Source / Surge / Gather → Bixi tablets in the courtyard → Penghu Academy → Wenchang Pavilion |
| 10:40 | Official Martial Temple · Grand Matsu Temple Right across the road from Chihkan Tower |
| 11:30 | Guohua Street · Yongle Market Lunch. Pair it with our Market Walks Vol.3 on Yongle Market |
| 13:00 | Zhengxing Street Shaved ice and old-house select shops |
| 14:00 | Back to the hotel for a midday rest.The key to a day in Tainan isn’t how much you walk – it’s whether you rest at midday. |
| 16:30 | Shennong Street Best photographed as dusk falls |
| 18:30 | Dinner. West Central District has plenty of choice; ask our butlers before you go out – which places are open today and which need a booking at that hour is something Google can’t tell you. |
| 20:00 | Chihkan Tower · by night (second visit) Same day, completely different place. Open until 21:30 |
| 21:00 | Walk back to the hotel and end the day in the rooftop garden |
— Where to Stay
Where to stay near Chihkan Tower: check this distance chart first
People who search for “hotels near Chihkan Tower” usually really want to know three things:Can I walk there? How long does it take? What’s on the way?
So rather than adjectives, here are distances. From3 Door Hotel (No. 77, Chenggong Road)to the main sights of West Central District – measured straight-line distance and walking time:
West Central District is unreasonably dense with historic sites – which is why walking from here beats driving.
| From 3 Door Hotel | Straight-line distance | Walking time |
|---|---|---|
| Tainan Station | 474 m | about 5 min |
| Chihkan Tower · Haishen Temple exhibition | 589 m | about 8 min |
| Official Martial Temple | 654 m | about 9 min |
| Grand Matsu Temple | 700 m | about 9 min |
| Tainan Confucius Temple | 921 m | about 13 min |
| Yongle Market · Guohua Street | 979 m | about 13 min |
| Shuixian Temple Market | 1,099 m | about 14 min |
| Shennong Street | 1,274 m | about 16 min |
What difference does staying within walking distance of Chihkan Tower make?
1. You can go twice.Chihkan Tower is open until 21:30. By day you see the exhibition’s documents and manuscripts; by night, the lit-up buildings – two different places. Only when you’re within walking distance will you happily go twice in one day.
2. You can come back and lie down at midday.Tainan is still around 30°C in the daytime from late September into October.The biggest reason a day in Tainan goes wrong isn’t too few sights – it’s skipping the midday rest.An 8-minute walk turns “back to the room for a nap” into something you’ll actually do, not just a line on the itinerary.
3. You save the time – and the stress – of parking.West Central District’s lanes are narrow, parking spaces are few, and on long weekends they’re almost impossible to find. Walking gives you back an hour a day.
4. No taxi needed from the station.3 Door Hotel is just 474 m, about a 5-minute walkfrom Tainan Station – even closer than Chihkan Tower. Arriving by train,you can walk straight here with your luggage, skip the taxi queue, and do the same on the way back.
Stay – where to stay near Chihkan Tower
Stay at 3 Door Hotel, walk into Chihkan Tower’s 400 years
3 Door Hotel is atNo. 77, Chenggong Road, West Central District, Tainan，5 minutes’ walk from Tainan Station and 8 minutes from Chihkan Tower, with the Official Martial Temple, Grand Matsu Temple, Guohua Street, Yongle Market and Shennong Street all within walking distance.
The hotel makes extensive use ofcypress wood and terrazzo floors, built to a standard ofdust-mite-free, formaldehyde-freeeco-friendly rooms, and its rooftopgardenlooks out over the old city’s architecture –after a 140-year-old building, you go back to sleep in another house that understands architecture.That, to us, is the most complete shape for this trip.
— Editor’s Note
Editor’s private notes
No. 01Short on time? Start upstairs – if you only have 20 minutes.
The ground-floor documents need time; rushing them is as good as not seeing them. But the upstairs works, “Light and Shadow of the Currents” and “Carp Lord”, are sensory –you can take them in fully in a short time. If you’re pressed, go upstairs first and save the ground floor for next time.
No. 02Get close to the paper effigy.
“Carp Lord” uses the traditional paper-effigy craft – bamboo frame, paper skin, hand painting.Things like this were originally destined to be burned– they exist in order to disappear. Chances to see a complete paper effigy up close in a gallery are rare. How its frame is tied together is even more interesting than how it looks.
No. 03In the ground-floor construction photos, look for the same angle in different decades.
Among the restoration photos shown for the first time, some arethe same spot photographed in different eras. Compare them side by side and you’ll see the building changing slowly over a century – which beam was replaced, which tiles were patched.It is the quietest, and the most powerful, part of the whole exhibition.
No. 04Count the nine stone tablets.
Really count them. Nine. Then think of the protective structures the workers put up around them in 2024.The fact that they are still standing there, intact, for you to count is the result of a lot of deliberate work by a lot of people.
No. 05Go back at night.
It’s a privilege that only comes with staying within walking distance. By day you see the exhibition; by night you see the architecture.The same place, two completely different experiences.
— Q & A
FAQ
Q1 When did the Haishen Temple exhibition at Chihkan Tower open? Do I need a separate ticket?
The new permanent exhibition in the Haishen Temple officially opened in July 2026。It is included in the Chihkan Tower ticket – no separate ticket needed.
Q2 What are Chihkan Tower’s opening hours and ticket prices?
Opening hours 08:30–21:30(including evening opening). Full price NT$70, concession NT$35,free for Tainan residents with ID. Address: No. 212, Section 2, Minzu Road, West Central District, Tainan. Tel: +886-6-220-5647.(Prices and hours as posted officially on site)
Q3 What is on display inside the Haishen Temple?
The ground floor opens with Charles W. Le Gendre’s 1870 “Map of Formosa and the Pescadores”, introduces the background to the temple, the Mudan Incident and the Sino-French War, andshows for the first time photos, manuscripts and documents from Chihkan Tower’s past restorations. The upper floor’s theme is “Source / Surge / Gather”, with “Light and Shadow of the Currents” (Weng Ting-kai Architects) and “Carp Lord” (Wu Wen-chin, traditional paper-effigy craft).
Q4 Is Chihkan Tower still under renovation? Can I visit normally?
Yes, you can visit normally.All three exhibition spaces – Wenchang Pavilion, Penghu Academy and the Haishen Temple – are complete and open.
Q5 How long should I allow?
Allow 90 minutes to 2 hours. If you want to read the ground-floor restoration documents properly, the Haishen Temple alone can take 40 minutes. The “30 minutes is enough” advice online dates from before the three galleries were finished.
Q6 Where should I stay near Chihkan Tower? How long is the walk from 3 Door Hotel?
3 Door Hotel is atNo. 77, Chenggong Road, West Central District, Tainan, a straight-line distance from Chihkan Tower of 589 m, about 8 minuteson foot – one of the places to stay within walking distance of Chihkan Tower. It is alsojust 474 m from Tainan Station, about a 5-minute walk, so you can walk straight from the station with your luggage. The Official Martial Temple and Grand Matsu Temple are about 9 minutes away on foot, Yongle Market and Guohua Street about 13 minutes.
Q7 What are the advantages of staying near Chihkan Tower?
The biggest advantage is thatyou can go twice. Chihkan Tower is open until 21:30 – the exhibition by day and the lit-up buildings by night are two completely different experiences. Staying within walking distance also means you can go back to the hotel for a rest in between, which is almost essential in Tainan’s summer and autumn. And on long weekends, when parking in West Central District is nearly impossible, walking saves you the daily hunt for a space.
— Epilogue
Epilogue: only things that have been restored have growth rings
The exhibition ends in front of those restoration documents on the ground floor.
We usually think of a “historic site” as a noun – something static that needs protecting. But this exhibition turns the monument back into averb: it has always been repaired, altered and reinterpreted. Someone repaired it in the Japanese era, someone after the war, and another group from 2022 to 2026.
Every restoration left traces,and those traces have now become the exhibits.
What you see is not a house that has been preserved, but a house that many people have taken turns caring for over 140 years.
Those are two completely different things.
After a 140-year-old building,
come back to another house that understands architecture
3 Door Hotel | No. 77, Chenggong Road, West Central District, Tainan
5 minutes’ walk from Tainan Station | 8 minutes’ walk from Chihkan Tower
LINE @3doorhotel | Tel 06-222-3088
Market Vogue – further reading: Market Walks
Vol.4 West Market: the most beautiful heritage market, restored for NT$135 million
Vol.5 Yamuliao: the philosophy of time over charcoal
Series overview ｜ Walking guide
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A butler’s walking guide: private must-eats around Chihkan and Guohua Street
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