Your essential guide to Taipei

Taipei Arena, the hotel is just five minutes by car from Taipei Songshan Airport, a couple of kilometres from Songshan Cultural Creative Park and about a 15-minute stroll down shady avenues to Fujin Street, with its designer décor stores, boutiques and cafés.

Songshan Cultural and Creative Park, one of the hubs of Taipei’s design revolution, is just a ten-minute taxi-ride from the hotel. While this vast complex of galleries, design labs, creative areas, coffee shops, bookstores and exhibition rooms has emerged from the cocoon of an old Japanese cigarette factory, the old United States Taiwan Defense Command has spawned the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, which has spearheaded the city’s contemporary art scene since it opened in 1983. For a journey back in time, head to the National Palace Museum, which includes a collection of nearly 700,000 of the rarest treasures from the Chinese Empire.

The Eslite Spectrum is a mall with a difference: rather than just the usual collection of big-name brands, this innovative shopping centre focuses on the sort of imaginative alternatives that will keep you coming back. The Eslite 24-Hour Bookstore is nothing short of a Taipei institution, while there are other quirky little stores, such as The Escape Artist, where you can paint a masterpiece while you eat lunch, or Hsu and Daughter where talented artisans can show you how to create your own leather goods. Nearby, you’ll also find Bellavita, a luxury-brand mall that’s a firm favourite with the city’s glitterati.

You can’t beat Mandarin Oriental, Taipei’s Ya Ge for traditional Chinese cuisine, taken to another level with the inclusion of only the finest, freshest ingredients. The signature dim-sum delicacies might be the highlight of your visit to Taipei. Reminiscent of an Italian courtyard, Xiang Se is another unsigned secret spot, with just a printed ‘X’ to mark the spot on the wall outside. Mountain & Sea House is set in a traditional townhouse and prides itself on genuine Taiwanese cuisine created with the healthiest of organic ingredients.