Why it looks like this

The Dutch East India Company built Fort Zeelandia on a sandbar here in 1624, and Koxinga's forces took it in 1662 — the fort still stands at Anping, though the sea that once surrounded it has silted into land. For more than two hundred years Tainan was Taiwan's capital.

That age shows in the streets: the old city is a weave of narrow lanes connecting hundreds of temples — more than any other Taiwanese city — with later Japanese-era boulevards and roundabouts cut through the fabric. Tainan is where the island's street history begins.