89th-floor deck
All of Taipei.
AngMoKio — CC BY-SA 3.0 · CEphoto, Uwe Aranas — CC BY-SA 3.0 · AngMoKio — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Armand du Plessis — CC BY 3.0 · Chensiyuan, edit by DXR — CC BY-SA 4.0
A 101-storey skyscraper rising 508 metres, the tallest building in the world from its opening on the last day of 2004 until the Burj Khalifa passed it in 2009, and still Taiwan's tallest and the symbol of its capital. Its design echoes a bamboo stalk divided into eight repeated sections, eight being the lucky number in Chinese culture. A high-speed lift reaches the 89th-floor observatory in under a minute, and from floors 88, 89 and 91 all of Taipei and its green mountains open out. At the heart of the tower hangs a huge golden steel ball that sways to damp the building's movement in typhoons and earthquakes, visible up close from the observatory. The lower floors hold a large mall and restaurants, and on New Year's Eve the tower launches fireworks watched around the world. The best view of the tower itself is from nearby Elephant Mountain. The standard observatory ticket is TWD 600, with pricier tickets adding the open-air deck on floor 101. Taipei's metro reaches it easily, and an EasyCard works on the metro, buses and in shops.
All of Taipei.
Steadies the tower.
From the tower.
Xinyi District, east-central Taipei
The standard ticket is TWD 600 for floors 88, 89 and 91; pricier tickets add the open-air deck on floor 101.
