Gold Museum, Ruifang District

Located in Jinguashi, the Gold Museum showcases Taiwan’s gold mining heritage, featuring restored mining facilities, historical residences, and interactive exhibits.

Planning your visit

The Gold Museum at Jinguashi occupies a mining settlement in the hills above Taiwan's northeast coast, and the site has three overlapping histories. Gold and copper were mined here from the late nineteenth century, intensively under Japanese colonial rule; the Japanese built a company town with dormitories, offices and a guesthouse constructed in expectation of a crown prince's visit; and during the Second World War the site held a prisoner-of-war camp where Allied prisoners, mostly British, worked the copper mines under conditions that killed many.

The museum covers all three. Restored mining facilities, the Benshan Fifth Tunnel which visitors enter, mining technology displays, the Japanese-era residences, and a memorial to the POWs. A 220-kilogram gold ingot is displayed and can be touched.

The setting is spectacular — steep green hills dropping to the Pacific — and the neighbouring village of Jiufen, with its lantern-lit stepped streets, is a short distance away and heavily visited.

It is around an hour from Taipei. Allow three hours. The main booking is an entry ticket. Current availability is shown below.