Kaohsiung, Taiwan: Harbour, Temples and Art

Kaohsiung, Taiwan’s great southern port, is a city that grew up around a single sheltered harbour. Container ships still slide through a narrow channel beneath a lighthouse on a coral-rock hill, ferries shuttle across to the long, thin island of Cijin, and the old warehouses along the quays have been handed over to artists. Within reach of the centre are Mazu temples that fishermen have trusted for centuries, a lake lined with pagodas, and one of the largest Buddhist complexes in Asia. This guide covers the city’s history, the sights worth your time and the practical side of a visit. On Day 6 of our Taiwan Lantern Festival small group tour, the group spends the morning on Cijin Island and the late afternoon at Fo Guang Shan.

A port city with a long memory

The city’s older name was Takau, or Dagou in Mandarin, which Britannica traces to the Makatao, an Indigenous people of the southwest coast. The Dutch, who held southwestern Taiwan for much of the seventeenth century, knew the area as Tancoia, and Chinese settlement grew around the harbour mouth from the late seventeenth century. In 1863 the port was opened to Western trade as a treaty port, with a customs station following in 1864, and British merchants and consuls soon followed.

Japan, which ruled Taiwan from 1895 to 1945, turned Takao into its main southern port. The harbour was dredged and extended between 1904 and 1907, the island’s north-south railway ended here, and in 1920 the town was given the name written with the characters still used today, read as Takao in Japanese and Kaohsiung in Mandarin. After 1945 the war-damaged port was rebuilt, and by the mid-1970s a vast waterfront industrial park of steelworks, shipyards and petrochemical plants had made Kaohsiung Taiwan’s centre of heavy industry. It became a special municipality in 1979 and merged with the surrounding county in 2010, so the city now stretches from the coast well into the mountains.

Kaohsiung was also where one of the defining events of Taiwan’s modern politics took place. On 10 December 1979, a Human Rights Day rally organised by the opposition Formosa magazine ended in clashes with police, and its leaders were later tried before a military court. The Formosa Incident, also called the Kaohsiung Incident, is now widely seen as a step on the road to the democratic reforms of the late 1980s and 1990s, and it is one of the themes of the Dome of Light described below.

Cijin Island: lighthouse, fort and the sea goddess

Cijin is the long, narrow strip of land that shelters Kaohsiung harbour from the Taiwan Strait. It was once a peninsula joined to the mainland at its southern end, until work began in 1967 on a second harbour entrance through its southern end, completed in 1975. Its northern tip, facing the city across the original harbour mouth, is one of the oldest-settled parts of Kaohsiung and the part most visitors see.

Above the ferry landing rises Cihou Hill, a ridge of coral rock. On its summit stands Cihou Lighthouse, which the Kaohsiung Travel website describes as a symbol of the city. The British built the first lighthouse here in 1883, and in 1918, under Japanese rule, the present octagonal domed brick tower, white with a black top, was built beside the original. The terrace around it looks over the harbour, the city skyline and the open strait.

Along the same ridge is Cihou Fort, built in 1875 in the wake of the Mudan Incident of 1871, as the Qing authorities strengthened Taiwan’s coastal defences. According to Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture, it was designed by the British architect J. W. Harwood and later reinforced under Governor Liu Ming-chuan with Armstrong guns. The fort combines a Western-style battery with a Chinese-style gateway, and the red brick walls beside the entrance are laid in the pattern of the character for “double happiness”, which is rare among Taiwan’s historic forts. Japanese warships shelled it in 1895, knocking out part of the inscription over the gate. In 2019 the Ministry raised it to a national historic site.

Down in the lanes behind the ferry pier is the Cijin Tianhou Temple, dedicated to Mazu, the sea goddess revered along Taiwan’s coast. The city government dates it to 1673, which makes it Kaohsiung’s oldest temple. Fishing families prayed here for safe returns, and the temple square served for generations as the island’s meeting place. It remains a working temple: visitors are welcome, but keep voices low, do not walk through the central door, which is traditionally reserved, and ask before photographing anyone at prayer. Beyond the temple, Cijin’s main street is lined with seafood stalls, and a short walk west brings you to a long beach of dark sand facing the strait.

How do you get to Cijin Island?

The simplest way to reach Cijin is by passenger ferry from the Gushan ferry pier, a crossing of only about five minutes. Ferries run frequently through the day, and the landing on Cijin is a few minutes’ walk from the Tianhou Temple and the main street. The lighthouse and fort are reached by a short but steep path and steps up Cihou Hill. A road tunnel under the harbour also links the southern end of the island to the mainland. Check current ferry times locally before you go.

The harbour front: a British consulate and the Pier-2 warehouses

Facing Cihou Hill across the harbour mouth, on a headland on the mainland side, is the red-brick Former British Consulate at Takao. Work on the consular office at the foot of the hill began in 1876, and the path linking it to the residence on the hilltop was completed in 1879. The buildings, in red brick with arched verandas, look out over the harbour whose trade the consuls were there to serve. The consulate closed in 1910, and the hilltop residence later served as a weather station before being restored. The Ministry of Culture made the consulate a national historic site in 2019, alongside Cihou Fort.

A little further along the waterfront, in Yancheng District, are the harbour warehouses of Pier-2. Abandoned as the port’s trade moved elsewhere, they were rediscovered in 2000 when organisers of a National Day fireworks display were looking for a venue. Artists took them over the following year, and since 2006 the city’s Bureau of Cultural Affairs has run Pier-2 Art Center as a place for exhibitions, performances and studios, with outdoor sculpture along the old railway lines. The Hamasen Museum of Taiwan Railway is also part of the complex.

Art in Kaohsiung beyond the harbour

Kaohsiung has invested heavily in the arts, and three places stand out. The Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, founded in 1994 as southern Taiwan’s first public art museum, sits in a park with around forty outdoor sculptures and installations set among lawns and a lake. The National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts, known as Weiwuying, opened in October 2018 on a former military training base. Designed by the Dutch practice Mecanoo, its single undulating roof takes its inspiration from the spreading crowns of the region’s banyan trees, and it shelters an opera house, a concert hall, a playhouse and a recital hall, with an outdoor theatre opening onto a large park.

The most surprising work of art, though, is underground. At Formosa Boulevard metro station, the Dome of Light by the Italian artist Narcissus Quagliata, made with the German Derix glass studio, spans 30 metres and is assembled from some 4,500 pieces of coloured glass. According to the city government, its four sections trace Taiwan’s pursuit of freedom and democracy, including the Formosa Incident, and themes of rebirth and tolerance.

Temples and pagodas at Lotus Pond

In Zuoying, in the north of the city, Lotus Pond is ringed by temples and pavilions. Its best-known landmarks are the Dragon and Tiger Pagodas, a pair of seven-storey towers built in 1976 and reached by a zigzag bridge across the water. Tradition says you should enter through the dragon’s mouth and leave through the tiger’s, which is believed to turn away bad fortune and bring good luck. Inside, the walls are decorated with koji pottery, the brightly glazed ceramic figures of southern Taiwanese temple art.

The lakeside area has been through several years of improvement works, reported complete by the Kaohsiung Tourism Bureau in early 2026, and the pagodas themselves, which belong to the neighbouring Ciji Temple, reopened in 2025 after a renovation that began in 2023; opening hours can change, so check before making a special trip. Lotus Pond is not part of the tour itinerary, but it is an easy addition if you spend extra time in the city.

Fo Guang Shan and the Buddha Museum

Inland in Dashu District, in the east of the municipality, is Fo Guang Shan, the Buddhist order founded in 1967 by the monk Hsing Yun. Its monastery is the base of a movement that now runs temples, schools and charities worldwide, and its practice of Humanistic Buddhism places everyday life, rather than withdrawal from it, at the centre of religious practice. Beside the monastery stands the Fo Guang Shan Buddha Museum, which opened on 25 December 2011 to house a tooth relic of the Buddha, entrusted to Hsing Yun in 1998 by the Tibetan lama Kunga Dorje Rinpoche.

The museum is built on a monumental scale. A broad avenue runs between eight pagodas, each about 37 metres high and representing the Noble Eightfold Path, to the main hall, behind which sits a bronze Buddha that reaches 108 metres including its base. Inside are shrines, exhibition halls on Buddhist history and art, and vegetarian dining. Our guide to the Fo Guang Shan Buddha Museum and Humanistic Buddhism covers the complex in depth.

Is Kaohsiung, Taiwan, worth visiting?

Yes: Kaohsiung offers a side of Taiwan that Taipei does not, with a working harbour, a strong maritime history and a warmer, more relaxed southern character. In a day you can stand on a nineteenth-century fort, visit one of the island’s oldest Mazu temples and see Fo Guang Shan’s vast Buddha Museum. Its location also makes it a natural base for the south, with Tainan’s historic sites a short drive away.

How long do you need in Kaohsiung?

A full day is enough to see Cijin Island and Fo Guang Shan, which is how the tour uses its time here. Two or three days let you add Pier-2, the old British consulate, Lotus Pond and the art museums at a gentler pace. If you are adding time before or after a tour, the city’s metro and light rail make it easy to explore independently.

How much walking does a day in Kaohsiung involve?

A moderate amount, most of it on level ground. The lanes around Cijin’s ferry landing and the temple are flat, but reaching the lighthouse and the fort means a steep climb on a paved path with steps, and the hilltop terraces have uneven surfaces. At Fo Guang Shan the main avenue is long, broad and level, though the distances add up. Kaohsiung lies south of the Tropic of Cancer, so even outside summer the sun can be strong: bring a hat, water and comfortable shoes.

Kaohsiung on Day 6 of the tour

Kaohsiung comes at the turning point of the tour, after the east coast and the hot springs of Chihpen. On Day 6 the group heads for Kaohsiung after breakfast, visits Cijin Island in the morning and explores Fo Guang Shan in the late afternoon, home to the Fo Guang Shan Buddha Museum. The next day the tour drives to Tainan, Taiwan’s oldest city, to see Chihkan Tower, originally the Dutch Fort Provintia in Tainan, along with the Koxinga Shrine, Anping Castle and Anping Old Street. From there the route turns inland to Sun Moon Lake in the central mountains, where the following day brings tea, temples and a private motorboat ride on the lake.

The tour is rated Level 2, Moderate: participants should be able to manage three to five hours of activity a day, the equivalent of walking up to 8 kilometres on uneven ground. An Odyssey Program Leader travels with the group throughout. The journey is built around the Lantern Festival, held on the first full moon of the lunar new year; our guide to Taiwan’s Lantern Festival and its sky lanterns explains the traditions behind it.

Kaohsiung rewards travellers who like to see how a place has been shaped by the sea: by Dutch and Chinese traders, British consuls, Japanese engineers and the fishing families of Cijin. On the Taiwan Lantern Festival tour, a small group of up to 16 travellers sees the harbour, the island and Fo Guang Shan in a single day with an Odyssey Program Leader, before continuing to Tainan and Sun Moon Lake.