National Taiwan Museum

The National Taiwan Museum sits inside a heavy, neoclassical building topped by a distinctive, oversized copper dome that turned green with age. It opened in nineteen fifteen to honor the Japanese colonial administration, serving as a display case for the island’s natural resources and indigenous cultures. During the inaugural exhibition, organizers crammed over ten thousand items into the halls, ranging from giant taxidermy specimens to detailed anthropological artifacts, effectively claiming Taiwan for the Japanese empire through the sheer weight of its classified collection.