Taipei does not ask you to choose between temples and skyscrapers, night markets and mountain tea houses — it asks you to sequence them well. This is a city split into distinct worlds: old Wanhua in the west, the Taipei 101 skyline in the east, a world-class museum in the northern hills, and hot springs and gondolas at its edges. Three days is enough for a superb first trip if you group each day by geography instead of zigzagging across the MRT map. This itinerary does exactly that: old Taipei and the memorials on Day 1, the museum and the mountains on Day 2, and Taipei 101, tea country and a day-trip decision on Day 3. Sort your base first with my guide to where to stay in Taipei — then just follow the days.
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Before Day 1, buy an EasyCard at any MRT station or convenience store. It taps you onto the MRT, buses, YouBikes and the Maokong Gondola. The MRT runs from about 6am to midnight, signage is in English throughout, and almost everything in this itinerary sits within a short walk of a station.
Day 1: Old Taipei — Longshan Temple, Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall and Ximending
Start where Taipei started: Wanhua, the city’s oldest district. Longshan Temple, founded in 1738, is still a working place of worship — arrive around 8 or 9am and you will share the courtyards with worshippers throwing moon blocks and lighting incense, not tour groups. The carved stone pillars, dragon roofs and waterfall shrine at the back reward a slow half hour. Dress and behave as a guest: this is a temple first and a sight second.
Walk ten minutes east through the old streets to the Bopiliao Historical Block, a restored strip of Qing-dynasty and Japanese-era shop houses, then ride the MRT two stops to Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall. The vast white hall, topped with a blue-tiled roof, stands over Liberty Square between the National Theater and National Concert Hall — arrive on the hour to watch the honour guard change, a precise, silent drill that draws a crowd every time. The gardens below, with their ponds and pavilions, are where Taipei comes to fly kites and practise tai chi.
Lunch nearby on Yongkang Street, the city’s most famous food lane: this is where the original Din Tai Fung began, and the queue for its soup dumplings is a Taipei rite of passage — take a number, then graze the neighbouring mango-shaved-ice and scallion-pancake stalls while you wait. Spend the late afternoon back west in Ximending, Taipei’s neon youth district of cinemas, street fashion and bubble tea, and finish the day the way Taipei insists you finish every day: at a night market. Huaxi Street, beside Longshan Temple, is the atmospheric old-timer; Ningxia Road is the food-focused local favourite a short ride north. If you would rather eat with a guide on your first night, the small-group Yansan Night Market food tour works through eight tastings at a market locals actually use, in groups of just four to six.
Day 2: The National Palace Museum, Beitou hot springs and Shilin Night Market
Give the morning to the National Palace Museum in Shilin — and go early. The museum holds close to 700,000 pieces of Chinese art and artefacts, the core of the imperial collection brought to Taiwan in 1948–49, with only a few thousand on display at any one time. First-timers should head straight for the two celebrities: the Jadeite Cabbage, a Qing-dynasty carving that turns a single piece of jade’s green and white into a perfect cabbage, insects included, and the Meat-Shaped Stone, a banded jasper carved to look uncannily like a piece of braised pork belly. Then work back through the bronzes, Song-dynasty ceramics and landscape painting with far fewer people around you. Practicalities: the museum opens Tuesday to Sunday, 9am to 5pm, standard tickets are NT$350, and it is not on an MRT line — ride the red line to Shilin station and hop on bus R30, 255 or 304 for the last ten minutes. Allow three hours minimum; completists need a full day.
From Shilin, stay on the red line north to Beitou for the afternoon. Change at Beitou station for the short Xinbeitou branch line, then walk up the valley: the 1913 Beitou Hot Spring Museum (free, and beautifully kept), the wooden Beitou Library, and the steaming, milky-green Thermal Valley, where the water sits close to boiling point. Finish with a soak — public baths and hotel day-spa packages both work — and you will understand why Taipei keeps a hot-spring suburb inside the city limits. My stay guide explains how to turn this into an overnight rather than an afternoon. Or swap this afternoon for the small-group Beitou and Yangmingshan day tour, which adds the national park’s grasslands and fumaroles and ends with a Beitou foot bath.
End the day back at Shilin Night Market, Taipei’s biggest and most famous, conveniently on your way back into town at Jiantan station. It is crowded and a little chaotic, and that is the point: fried chicken cutlets bigger than your face, pepper buns, flame-torched beef and a basement food court for when you need to sit down. Go hungry, share everything, and treat the first stall’s queue as a recommendation, not an obstacle.
Day 3: Taipei 101, Elephant Mountain and Maokong tea — or a day trip out
Day 3 belongs to the east side. Start at Taipei 101, for two decades the defining image of the city: 508 metres and 101 floors, the world’s tallest building from 2004 until 2010, and still Taiwan’s tallest. The observatory on the 88th and 89th floors (standard ticket NT$600) adds the building’s own engineering as an exhibit — the 660-ton tuned mass damper, a giant gold sphere suspended inside the tower, swings gently to keep the skyscraper steady in typhoons and earthquakes. Check the sky before you buy: on a clear morning the view runs to the mountains that ring the Taipei basin; in low cloud you are paying to stand inside the weather.
For the classic photograph of the tower rather than from it, walk one MRT stop (or fifteen minutes) to Xiangshan station and climb Elephant Mountain. The stone steps are steep but the main viewpoints are under 30 minutes up, and sunset here — the tower turning gold, then the city lights coming on — is the single best free view in Taipei. Go on a weekday if you can; the rock platforms get busy at dusk on weekends.
With energy left, ride the MRT’s Wenhu line south to Taipei Zoo station and board the Maokong Gondola up into the tea hills. The 30-minute ride climbs over forested ridges to Maokong village, where teahouses pour the local Tieguanyin oolong on terraces above the city — order a pot, a plate of tea-oil noodles, and let the afternoon slow down.
Or swap the afternoon for a day trip. If one experience beyond the city calls loudest, it is usually the north coast and the old gold-rush hills: Yehliu’s wind-carved rock formations, Jiufen’s lantern-lit lanes and a sky lantern released at Shifen. That route is a full day and genuinely awkward by public transport, which is why it is the one day in this itinerary where a booked tour beats DIY — the Yehliu, Jiufen and Shifen day tour is the version I recommend in my Taipei stay guide. Runners-up: the Thousand Island Lake and Pinglin tea country south of the city, for travellers who prefer tea fields to old streets.
Practical tips for 3 days in Taipei
Getting around: EasyCard plus MRT covers almost everything here; the only bus you need is the R30 (or 255/304) from Shilin to the Palace Museum. Taxis and ride-hailing are cheap by international standards for late-night market returns.
When to go: October to December brings the most comfortable weather — warm, drier, and clear enough for Elephant Mountain sunsets. Summers are hot, humid and typhoon-prone; spring is pleasant but wetter.
How this fits a bigger Asia trip: Taipei pairs naturally with its neighbours — the same stay-itinerary-tours rhythm works for my Seoul in 3 Days and Hong Kong in 3 Days guides, and many travellers route through two or three of the three cities in a single trip.
The short version
Day 1: Longshan Temple, Bopiliao, Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, Yongkang Street, Ximending, night market. Day 2: National Palace Museum early, Beitou hot springs in the afternoon, Shilin Night Market at night. Day 3: Taipei 101 in the morning, Elephant Mountain at sunset, Maokong’s teahouses in between — or the Jiufen day trip if you want one big excursion. Three days, four worlds, one EasyCard.