Former Tainan Weather Observatory

The Former Tainan Weather Observatory (原台南測候所) was one of the first five meteorological stations established by the Japanese colonial government in Taiwan. Following Japan's acquisition of Taiwan through the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895, the colonial administration recognized the strategic importance of weather observation for both governance and military operations in the typhoon-prone western Pacific. On July 12, 1896, the Taiwan Governor-General's Office approved plans for weather stations in Taipei, Taichung, Tainan, Hengchun, and Penghu. The Tainan station was formally established on January 1, 1897, in rented premises; its permanent building rose on elevated terrain known as Jiuling (鷲嶺), and the station moved in on March 3, 1898.

The observatory's architecture is remarkably distinctive — an eighteen-sided (十八角形) polygonal structure approximately 15 meters in diameter enclosing about 180 square meters of floor space. At its center rises a white cylindrical observation tower roughly 3 meters in diameter, giving the building an overall height of about 12 meters, surrounded by six offices arranged in concentric rings with a circular corridor between them. The building's exterior features red brick walls with a black-tiled roof. This concentric-circle design with the protruding central tower earned the nickname "Pepper Tube" (胡椒管) because of its resemblance to a pepper grinder. Among the 24 weather stations eventually established across colonial Taiwan, only the earliest stations at Taipei, Tainan, and Penghu employed this distinctive concentric layout.

During the Second World War, the Tainan Weather Observatory served as part of the broader meteorological network supporting Japanese military operations in the Pacific theater. Staff conducted regular observations of wind speed, visibility, cloud types and coverage, recording data from instruments atop the observation tower and transmitting reports to the Governor-General's Weather Bureau (present-day Central Weather Administration) in Taipei. Taiwan's position made these observations critical for forecasting typhoons and weather conditions affecting military operations across the South China Sea, the Philippines, and Okinawa.

Following Japan's surrender in 1945, the station became the Tainan Weather Station of the Taiwan Provincial Weather Bureau (臺灣省氣象局臺南氣象臺) under Republic of China administration. It remained a working weather station for the rest of the century; in 2001 it was merged into the newly created Southern Region Weather Center next door, and the old building was restored in 2003–2004 as an exhibition hall of meteorological history. The Tainan City Government designated the building a municipal historic site in 1998, recognizing its century of continuous weather observation. In 2003, the Ministry of the Interior elevated its status to a national historic monument — the highest heritage designation in Taiwan — in recognition of its unique architectural form and historical significance as the island's oldest surviving weather station.

The observatory sustained damage in the 2016 southern Taiwan earthquake and underwent extensive repairs, reopening to the public on March 31, 2019 as the Museum of Meteorology operated by the Central Weather Administration Southern Region Weather Center. The restored building preserves historical meteorological instruments and exhibits documenting over a century of weather observation in Taiwan, while the iconic eighteen-sided structure and its central tower remain a beloved landmark of downtown Tainan.