Chikan Tower (Former Japanese Army Garrison Hospital)

Chikan Tower (赤崁樓), also known as Fort Provintia (普羅民遮城), is one of Taiwan's most historically significant landmarks, located in the West Central District of Tainan. Originally constructed by the Dutch East India Company in 1653 as an administrative center for their colonial holdings in southern Taiwan, the fort has witnessed over 370 years of layered history spanning Dutch, Zheng dynasty, Qing dynasty, Japanese colonial, and modern eras.

The original Dutch fort was built using a distinctive mixture of sugar water, glutinous rice, and crushed oyster shells as mortar, with red brick walls forming three interconnected square-shaped bases. After the Dutch were expelled by Koxinga (Zheng Chenggong) in 1662, the site served various administrative and educational purposes through the Qing dynasty, during which the Haishen Temple (海神廟) and Wenchang Pavilion (文昌閣) were constructed atop the old fort foundations between 1879 and 1886.

Following Japan's acquisition of Taiwan in 1895, the Japanese colonial government repurposed the Chikan Tower complex for military use. In 1897, the Haishen Temple, Wenchang Pavilion, and the adjacent Wuzi Shrine (五子祠) were converted into the Japanese Army Tainan Garrison Hospital (陸軍衛戍病院), with the upper floors remodeled in Japanese architectural style to accommodate medical facilities. The historic buildings served as wards and administrative offices for the military hospital, which treated Japanese soldiers stationed in southern Taiwan.

The garrison hospital operated at the Chikan Tower site until 1917, when a larger-scale hospital complex was constructed north of the Japanese Second Infantry Regiment barracks (now National Cheng Kung University's Guangfu Campus) under the Third Phase Permanent Barracks Plan. The Wuzi Shrine collapsed in a typhoon in 1911 and was not rebuilt. In 1918, parts of the site were used as a branch campus for a Japanese language school. In 1935, the Japanese government designated the structure as an important historical monument. During 1942, the Tainan City Government demolished the remaining Dashidian Hall and Wuzi Shrine structures, leaving only the gate hall of the Penghu Academy. Restoration work was carried out in 1943-1944 under the supervision of historian Lu Jiaxing.

After Japan's surrender in 1945, the Republic of China government undertook extensive restoration of Chikan Tower. Major renovation campaigns in the 1960s and subsequent decades restored and enhanced the site, which was designated a first-class national historic monument (now National Historic Site). Today, Chikan Tower stands as one of Tainan's premier tourist attractions and a symbol of the city's rich multicultural heritage, with the nine imperial stele-bearing stone tortoises (贔屭), moved here from the Great South Gate in 1960, in its courtyard and the beautifully restored temple buildings drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors annually.