Taipei Story House
Half-timbered Tudor-style mansion built by a tea merchant in nineteen thirteen, now a garden museum of local history.
Location
About this audio guide
In Taipei, this half-timbered Tudor mansion was built in 1913 by tea merchant Chen Chao-chun, not to live in but to entertain overseas buyers and dignitaries with an England they had never seen. The guide follows the house's odd mix of brick and gables above, and a staircase inside that curls upward like a pagoda hidden in a British shell. It then traces the mansion's decades of drift as the city grew up around it, its heritage status not yet enough to save it. Look for that staircase first — it is the building arguing with itself.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Lin An Tai Historical House and Museum
Two-century-old Fujianese courtyard mansion, dismantled and rebuilt on riverside parkland to escape a highway.
The Lin Family Mansion and Garden
Restored Qing-dynasty merchant mansion and classical garden with pavilions, ponds and rockery once guarded by militia.
Plum Garden
Japanese-era timber summer house with a concrete air-raid shelter, once a calligrapher's riverside retreat.
Dihua Street
Nineteenth-century tea-trade street lined with Baroque shophouses and traditional herb stalls.
Beitou Hot Spring Museum
Restored Japanese-era public bathhouse with a tiled Roman-style bath hall and tatami lounge above.
Xinbeitou Historic Station
Restored wooden Japanese-era railway station, dismantled and later brought back to its original neighborhood.