The National Palace Museum holds the finest collection of Chinese imperial art in the world: nearly 700,000 paintings, calligraphy works, jades, bronzes, porcelains, lacquerware, books and curios, almost all of them carried out of the Forbidden City by the retreating Nationalist government in 1948-49. Only a small fraction is on display at any one time, and the collection rotates so that any given visit shows different highlights.
Famous permanent objects include the carved jade cabbage with grasshoppers, the meat-shaped stone, the carved ivory ball of nineteen concentric layers, and the long horizontal landscape scrolls of the Northern Song masters. The museum complex sits on a wooded hillside in the north of the city — give it at least half a day, and allow extra time for the lunchtime queues. The Mandarin tour audio guide is excellent. Reachable from the MRT Shilin station via a 10-minute bus ride.