Hengchun Old City Wall

Hengchun Old City Wall (恆春縣城) is a late Qing dynasty fortification located in Hengchun Township, Pingtung County, at the southern tip of Taiwan. It is the only castle town in Taiwan where all four original gates remain standing, and is protected as a national historical site.

Construction and Origins

The city walls were built between 1875 and 1879 following the Mudan Incident (牡丹社事件) of 1874, when a Japanese punitive expedition against indigenous Taiwanese peoples exposed the Qing government's weak control over southern Taiwan. Shen Baozhen (沈葆楨), dispatched to manage the crisis, recommended establishing a new county and fortification in the Hengchun Peninsula. The siting and construction were entrusted to Liu Ao (劉璈), an official versed in geomancy. The completed fortification comprised 2.6 km of walls encircling the town, with four gates (north, south, east, and west), each equipped with gatehouses and cannons, and a surrounding moat. The southern half housed civilians while military barracks occupied the northern section.

Japanese Colonial Period (1895–1945)

After Taiwan was ceded to Japan under the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895, Hengchun came under Japanese administration, and from 1920 it was the seat of Hengchun District (恆春郡) in Takao Prefecture (高雄州). In 1908, a devastating typhoon severely damaged the wooden gatehouses atop the gates. The Japanese colonial authorities permitted local residents to salvage stone from the damaged city walls and gate towers to rebuild their homes, accelerating the deterioration of the fortification. Despite this, the Japanese government recognized the historical value of the city walls and designated them as a Taiwan Historic Site, Scenic Spot, and Natural Monument (臺灣史蹟名勝天然紀念物) in December 1935.

World War II

During WWII, the Hengchun area gained strategic importance due to the nearby Hengchun Airfield (恆春飛行場), which served Japanese military aviation operations in southern Taiwan. American forces targeted the area with air raids and the old city suffered war damage; holes in the wall near the south gate are locally attributed to machine-gun strafing from low-flying aircraft. These scars remain visible today and serve as tangible evidence of the wartime suffering experienced by Taiwanese civilians during the conflict.

Postwar Preservation

The 1959 Hengchun earthquake caused further damage, and sections of wall were removed for road construction in the postwar decades. In 1979 the remaining fortification was provisionally listed as a first-grade monument, and on August 19, 1985 it was formally designated a second-grade monument, later reclassified as a national monument (國定古蹟). The south gate tower was rebuilt in 1979 and the east gate tower in 1983, though the latter collapsed again in 1998 because of termite damage. Today, while continuous wall sections survive primarily near the north and east gates, all four gate structures remain intact — the South Gate (明都門), North Gate, East Gate, and West Gate — making Hengchun the best-preserved example of a Qing-era walled city in Taiwan and an important monument spanning the Qing, Japanese colonial, and modern eras.