The Best Places in Taiwan

Gothic stone arches and gilt-framed headboards in rural Taiwan is a committed bit, and Grasse Grace Manor commits completely. The rooms pull from 19th-century Paris and the French countryside, mixing wood-paneled rustic chic with ornate chandeliers. Restaurant Jasmine serves French cuisine beneath dramatic arched windows, while Cacti Bar does cocktails under a canopy of hanging ferns. A Michelin Selected Hotel, and one that keeps you slightly unsure which country you're in.

A Neapolitan-style gas oven sits on full display as you walk in, which sets expectations immediately at this casual pizza shop in Xinzhuang. The room is high-ceilinged and easygoing, with a small blue room tucked toward the back for when you want to pretend you're somewhere quieter. The menu covers white and red pizzas, Italian-style pastas, and desserts, with a short Italian beer list to wash it down. It ranked 45th on 50 Top Pizza Asia-Pacific.

Fried pizza sits on the menu alongside the baked kind, which tells you this Neapolitan pizzeria in Lukang takes its Campanian credentials seriously. The dough is soft and well-leavened, the crust fragrant, and the toppings are chosen with real restraint. A gorgonzola and coppa combination turns out to be the quiet standout. Ranked on 50 Top Pizza Asia-Pacific, Vesuvio is a long way from Naples and seems entirely unbothered by that fact.

The geothermal spring beneath Sun Moon Lake was unknown until renovations here turned it up, and it now feeds the natural hot spring baths in most rooms. This lakeside resort sits above the northern shore, and those wide windows make the lake's shifting light and color hard to ignore from bed. It's been around forever, but feels more restorative than historic, grounded in local presence and sustainability practices that don't announce themselves too loudly.

Every room at this 93-room lakeside resort has a private balcony and a hot spring pool, and the architect clearly knew not to compete with Sun Moon Lake. The interiors are pared back to the point of restraint, which sounds like a compromise until the mist rolls across the water at dawn and you realize the whole room was designed to frame that exact moment.

An all-suite resort on the shore of Sun Moon Lake, built from Chinese cypress and designed by Australian architect Kerry Hill to match the drama of the water and mountains outside every window. Each suite comes with a full living room and a balcony pointed straight at the lake, and the spa's hot and cold pools share the same view. Sun Moon Lake is not somewhere you stumble onto, which makes the effort feel deliberate in a good way.

Six rooms inside the National Center for Traditional Arts, each named after an old Taiwanese land convention, make up this cluster-style hotel where the grounds and the museum are the same grounds. Architect Huang Sheng-yuan worked in red brick, terrazzo, and raw wood, leaving the bamboo groves and ponds intact. Guests wander freely through cultural exhibits and craft workshops after check-in, which is either a feature or a plot twist, depending on how you packed.

A coffee shop on the 89th floor of Taipei 101, which does settle the question of where to take a meeting when you want the other person slightly off-balance. kafeD is a calm, unhurried cafe serving pour-overs and lattes alongside light pastries, with the kind of view that makes the city below look like a very convincing scale model. Come for the coffee, stay because the elevator ride back down feels like commitment.

A two-story house tucked into a lane off Linsen North Road, After5 is a coffee shop that slides into neighborhood bar as the evening arrives. The lofted upper floor looks down over the main bar, which gives the place a lived-in, borrowed-apartment feeling. Single-origin coffees and fruit-forward signature drinks share the menu with tea, and later with beer and alcohol. It's the kind of spot where nobody seems to be in a hurry to leave.

The walls at this coffee shop in Da'an are lined with art and design magazines, album covers, and posters that feel like someone's actual collection rather than set dressing. The menu splits cleanly between espresso drinks and pour-overs, and the whole operation has that same unhurried quality. There's a small interior and a semi-enclosed porch out front. You can stop in for a quick one, but weekday mornings have a way of stretching.

Rooms begin on the 16th floor at this IHG-flag hotel, which holds the distinction of being the tallest building in Chiayi City, a fact that becomes obvious the moment you spot it. Floor-to-ceiling windows pull in views that stretch toward Alishan's ridgelines. A rooftop bistro and a family leisure floor give it a resort-ish feel for a city property, and the regional design references land lightly enough that you notice them without feeling lectured.

A Victorian-inspired resort hotel that climbs 220 meters up Hualien's Coastal Mountain Range, with the Pacific on one side and the Central Range on the other. Rooms come with balconies as standard, and the Presidential Suite leans into the Buckingham Palace brief with William Morris fabrics and Wedgwood porcelain. The altitude earns its keep at sunrise, when the ocean lights up below and guests in dressing gowns briefly consider staying forever.

Rooms here face either the Pacific or the mountains behind Hualien, so picking a side is its own small drama. This is a resort in the real sense: the spa and the onsen-style spring-fed baths are reasons to stay in, not just amenities to photograph. The east coast keeps things from feeling like a city-hotel situation, even if the 252 rooms and the upscale dining options could pass for one on a grey Tuesday.