National Palace Museum

The National Palace Museum houses the world's largest collection of Chinese art — nearly 700,000 artifacts spanning 8,000 years that were brought to Taiwan by Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government when they fled the Chinese mainland in 1949. The collection, which represents the accumulated treasures of the Chinese imperial palace, includes the finest examples of Chinese painting, calligraphy, ceramics, bronzes, jade carvings, and lacquerwork in existence.

The Jadeite Cabbage (a Qing dynasty jade carving of a cabbage with a cricket and locust hiding in its leaves, so realistic that visitors lean in to check if it's real) and the Meat-Shaped Stone (a piece of jasper that looks exactly like a cube of braised pork belly) are the museum's most famous objects — everyday items rendered in precious stone with a skill that transforms craft into art. The collection is rotated continuously (only about 3% is displayed at any time), which means repeat visits always reveal different objects.

The museum sits in the hills of Shilin, surrounded by a Chinese-style garden, and the approach — up a grand staircase to a Chinese palace-style building overlooking Taipei — provides the ceremonial experience that the collection's imperial origins demand. The museum is one of the four great Chinese art museums in the world (alongside the Palace Museum in Beijing, the Shanghai Museum, and the Nanjing Museum), and the fact that this collection is in Taipei rather than Beijing is the most tangible legacy of the Chinese Civil War.