Some museums try to freeze history behind glass. Taiwan's National Railway Museum (國家鐵道博物館) does something more ambitious — it keeps the grease, the rails, and the sheer scale of an industrial-era workshop intact, and then invites you to walk right through it. Tucked behind Songshan Cultural and Creative Park in central Taipei, the museum opened its first phase to the public on July 31, 2025, after nearly a decade of restoration.

A Short History of the Site

The ground this museum stands on has been making and mending trains for almost a hundred years. Its direct predecessor, the Taipei Railway Workshop (台北機廠), opened on October 30, 1935, during the Japanese colonial era, on a nearly 20-hectare plot the authorities had acquired in 1929. At its peak, it was the largest rolling-stock maintenance and logistics centre in Taiwan — the place where locomotives came to be overhauled, coaches to be reskinned, and parts to be forged.

The workshop's own lineage stretches back even further, to the late-Qing "Taipei Arsenal Bureau," a 19th-century facility just outside the old city's North Gate that originally repaired military hardware. In other words, heavy industry has been hammering away on this side of Taipei since long before the first Japanese-era train rolled off its rails.

The twentieth century was not kind to the site. US Air Force bombing during World War II left parts of it in ruins, and the post-war decades saw repeated rebuilds — including a wave of American-aid-funded expansion in the 1950s to service new diesel-electric locomotives and passenger coaches. The workshop kept running until the end of 2013, when its operations shifted to a new facility in Taoyuan.

Rather than let the bones of the complex be redeveloped into yet another shopping block, Taiwan designated it a national monument in 2015. The Ministry of Culture set up a Preparatory Office of the National Railway Museum in 2019, and after years of painstaking conservation work on buildings, machinery, and rolling stock, the site welcomed its first visitors in the summer of 2025 under the banner "Railway Museum: Moving Forward."

The Free Part: Wander the Old Workshop

You can show up at the museum and see an astonishing amount without paying a cent. The free-access zone covers several of the site's most historically important buildings, and honestly, it is where the atmosphere hits hardest.

The General Office (the handsome red-brick administrative building near the entrance) hosts rotating exhibitions on railway culture, staff life, and the history of the workshop itself. Expect vintage uniforms, hand-drawn schematics, old timetables, and a surprising amount of material on the bento tradition that grew up around Taiwan's rail network.

The Employees' Bathhouse is the sentimental heart of the site and, fittingly, the first structure here to be granted heritage status. Its distinctive arched roof is held up by trusses made of recycled rails — a bit of engineering improvisation that has become iconic. Inside, circular communal baths and steam-era fittings give you a strong sense of how workers actually lived between shifts.

The Assembly Hall (Grand Hall) and adjacent spaces host temporary exhibitions — the content rotates, but it typically blends archival photography, scale models, art installations, and displays on railway music, food, and design culture. On top of that, the first phase includes the technician training building, the materials testing facility, and various outdoor areas where you can see weathered cranes, track infrastructure, and buildings still awaiting their turn at restoration.

That last part is important. Only about a quarter of the 17-hectare complex is currently open; more than 70% is still fenced off, which lends the whole place an unfinished, almost archaeological feeling. You are walking through a work in progress, and that is part of the charm.

The Paid Part: The Diesel-Electric Workshop

The single ticketed attraction — and the main event — is the Diesel-Electric Locomotive Workshop permanent exhibition. General admission runs NTD 100. For what's inside, it is a bargain.

The hall itself sprawls across more than 2,000 square metres, and its high roof, overhead cranes, and preserved maintenance pits give you an unfiltered look at how the workshop actually operated. Around that industrial backbone, curators have arranged roughly 24 restored vehicles and pieces of large equipment. Highlights include:

• A lovingly restored Blue Train (the old Taiwanese second-class workhorse in its unmistakable dark-blue livery).
• A first-generation Chu-Kuang express coach in its period white-and-blue "dumbbell" paint scheme.
• A brake van built on-site in 1965 and exported to Thailand, a small but proud symbol of the era when the workshop was a net exporter of rolling stock.
• Sleeping cars donated by Japan Railways, filling in gaps where Taiwan's own historical examples had been lost.
• Mechanical cutaways and interactive multimedia stations that explain how diesel-electric locomotives actually work — how the diesel engine drives a generator, which in turn drives the traction motors that move the wheels.

📷 View of the Machine Hall inside the Diesel-Electric Workshop · R300A track motor car on display · Cutaway of an EMD 567-series diesel engine

Practical Tips

The museum is open 9:30 AM to 5:00 PM, closed Mondays. Most signage is bilingual (Chinese and English), and the site is an easy walk from Nanjing Sanmin MRT station (Green Line). Give yourself at least half a day — more if you are the kind of person who reads every caption. Wear comfortable shoes; there is a lot of ground to cover, much of it on original concrete and cobbles.

Taiwan's rail story is one of colonial ambition, post-war reinvention, and quiet engineering pride, and it is hard to think of a better place to feel all three at once. Go now, while the site still has that half-restored, half-sleeping-giant feeling. A decade from now, when the remaining 70% opens up, it may well be one of Asia's great industrial museums — but there is something special about seeing it mid-transformation.

All photos from my Taiwan 2026 — National Railway Museum album on Flickr.

Sources consulted for this post: the National Railway Museum's official English history page, Focus Taiwan's 2025 opening coverage, Taipei Times on the nine-year restoration, and Taiwan Panorama's feature "Archiving the Railway Age".

Someone told me before I went that you don’t really see the National Palace Museum—you just pick a section and accept that the rest will have to wait. After a few hours, that feels about right.

The collection that survived everything

The short version: this collection wasn’t supposed to end up here.

It starts in 1925, when the Qing imperial holdings became the Palace Museum in Beijing. Less than a decade later, with Japan advancing, the best pieces were packed up and sent south. Then moved again. And again. For years—Shanghai, Nanjing, inland, into caves, monasteries, anywhere that felt marginally safer.

In 1949, as the civil war ended, a portion of those crates—roughly a fifth—was taken to Taiwan. That fraction included an outsized share of the most important works. After a long stretch in storage, the collection finally settled into its current home in Taipei in 1965.

It’s worth keeping that in mind. A lot of what you’re looking at has already survived at least one near miss with history. The cultural revolution destroyed a lot of China’s ancient historic artifacts.

What you actually see

There are around 700,000 objects in the collection. Only a small slice is on display at any given time, and things rotate often. You’re not here to “complete” it—you’re here to follow your interests.

Bronzes

Ritual vessels from the Shang and Zhou periods—three thousand years old and still imposing. The Mao Gong ding is the headline piece, its interior cast with nearly 500 characters of inscription. It supposedly reads like administrative paperwork, which somehow makes it better.

Jade and hardstone

This is where the crowds cluster. The Jadeite Cabbage and the Meat-shaped Stone draw predictable lines, and, yes, they’re worth a look (alas, when I visited the cabbage was in the southern branch on display). But the quieter cases are more interesting—neolithic discs, burial pieces, and Qing carvings that turn a single stone into something improbably intricate.

Ceramics

The section that’s easiest to get stuck in. Tang glazes, Song restraint, blue-and-white finding its footing, then Qing excess. It’s essentially a timeline of taste, laid out in glass cases.

Painting and calligraphy

Low light, short rotations, and works that don’t tolerate exposure. Handscrolls, album leaves, hanging scrolls—pieces meant to be engaged with slowly. If this is your thing, budget more time than you think. If it isn’t, don’t force it.

Buddhist and religious art

Quieter rooms, dim lighting, reflective glass. Gilt figures, stone carvings, smaller bronzes. Not the easiest to photograph, but that doesn’t stop anyone.

Rare books and documents

Easy to skip. Don’t. Imperial edicts, handwritten texts, and the Siku Quanshu—an 18th-century attempt to compile an entire literary tradition. The craftsmanship alone justifies a pause.

Decorative and imperial arts

Lacquer, cloisonné, textiles, furniture. This is where it starts to feel less like a museum and more like an extremely well-appointed residence.

Practical notes

Getting there is straightforward—bus from Shilin or Dazhi MRT. Photography is generally fine without flash, with occasional exceptions. Give yourself half a day at minimum. A full day if you’re taking the paintings seriously.

I shot everything on a Hasselblad X2D II 100C with the 35–100mm, mostly handheld in low light at high ISO, dealing with reflections as best as possible.

Final thought

The National Palace Museum isn’t just a collection—it’s a contingency plan that worked. A compressed version of a cultural memory that, at several points, could have been lost.

Worth seeing. Not something you finish.

Toronto is growing at an incredible rate—spreading across the vast lakeside plain it anchors and rising in dense vertical pockets. In just a few years, its population has surpassed that of other burgeoning urban centers, making it the fourth-largest city in North America. Real estate prices are soaring. In response, downtown has become a collage of bombastic architectural statement pieces—futuristic spires contorting in all directions or stacked like offset pixels. With each structure vying for attention, a dizzying jumble of styles and scales has emerged among the few historic buildings that remain. The most successful new developments, however, are those that build upon—rather than erase—existing architecture.

Take the newly opened Nobu Residences and Hotel, a Teeple Architects–designed complex that fully incorporates the iconic façade of the Pilkington Glass building that long stood in its place. Its defining feature: glass bricks. Preserved as the skin of the original structure, these elements reappear throughout the multipronged, city-within-a-city destination. Rising from this foundation are two 45-story towers with angled window bays and gently sculpted façade fins. As they ascend, a 15,000-square-foot Nobu restaurant and surrounding retail spaces give way to 660 residential units and, above, 36 “villas in the sky” guestrooms. In between, a two-story amenities podium is carved through by a near temple-like circular void.

Responsible for the comprehensive outfitting of these spaces is Miami- and Toronto-based multidisciplinary practice Studio Munge, a firm that prides itself on crafting immersive experiences. “The dramatic opening between the 9th and 10th floors allows daylight to cascade deep into the interior spaces below,” says founding principal Alessandro Munge. “From the gym that encircles it, guests can observe natural light, rainfall, and snowfall descending, while upper-level rooms look down into this illuminated core.” It offers a more unified, calming counterpoint to the hurried streets cutting across the city beyond.

Though exclusive and limited in number, the accommodations range widely in size and features. Strategic spatial planning ensures a consistent set of priorities throughout: bed orientations that frame views; walk-in closets; generous living areas; and window-side soaking tubs. These traditional wooden elements subtly reference Nobu Hospitality’s Japanese origins.

That cultural cue informs the entirety of the interior styling. The calming, restorative qualities of ryokans—traditional Japanese inns with tatami-matted rooms—serve as a thoughtful point of departure for finishes and furnishings. It’s a deliberate counterbalance to the energy of the city outside. “Rather than interpreting the hotel through a conventional luxury lens, this cue was complemented by subtle Canadian influences,” Munge adds. In the lobby, nods to the local landscape are abstracted and rendered through traditional Japanese metalwork.

In the guestrooms, soft blue spectrums suggest serenity, referencing sky and water—Lake Ontario, just visible through the thicket of nearby towers—while also evoking escape. Framing this palette, Munge and his team employ a restrained material selection: Tundra Grey stone with a leathery finish, rift-cut white oak, hand-dyed indigo textiles, and handcrafted Kawara tiles.

The finishing touch is a carefully curated suite of furnishings from leading brands and designers, including B&B Italia, Gallotti & Radice, Henge, Piet Boon, Christophe Delcourt, The Rug Company, Apparatus, Giopato & Coombes, Holly Hunt, Karimoku Case Study, and Carl Hansen & Søn.

What: Nobu Hotel Toronto
Where: Toronto, Canada
How much: $2,700 per night
Design draws: A Japanese ryokan-style retreat high above ever-expanding Toronto outfitted with muted tones and natural materials. A residential tower hotel with a comprehensive two level amenities complex pierced by circular void with cascading natural light, rain, and snow.
Book it: Nobu Hotel Toronto

Photography by Ema Peter,

A new report from the nonprofit research group Tech Transparency Project (TTP) claims that Google and Apple’s app stores go beyond simply hosting harmful “nudify” and “undress” apps that remove women’s clothing in images, and actually encourage users to download those apps.

In January, TTP published research that showed how the app stores host dozens of “nudify” and undressing apps. This new research, released on Wednesday and first reported by Bloomberg, shows how the stores don’t just passively host those apps, but push them toward users through search and advertising. 

TTP conducted a series of searches in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, according to their writeup of the research, using terms like “nudify,” “undress,” and “deepnude.” 

After testing the apps that appeared in the top 10 search results, they found that “roughly 40 percent of the apps that came up in both the Apple and Google Play search results could render women nude or scantily clad,” and that “Apple and Google ran ads for nudify apps in some of the search results—including, in Google’s case, a carousel of ads for some of the most sexually explicit apps encountered in the investigation.” They also found that the stores can lead users to more and different nudify apps through autocomplete search queries.

“TTP found that ads for nudify apps came up as the top result in three of the Apple searches. Apple, which controls all of the advertising in its app store, is selling and placing these ads,” the researchers wrote. “Apple says it prohibits ad content that ‘promotes adult-oriented themes or graphic content.’ But TTP’s findings suggest Apple is not always enforcing that policy.” The first result for an App Store search for “deepfake,” they found, was for an app that easily replaces women’s clothed images with nude versions. 

In 2024, 404 Media covered how Google surfaced apps through searches for “undress apps,” “best deepfake nudes,” and similar terms with promoted results, despite Google’s ad policies against this type of content. 

Nudify apps became a popular market for years, but today, they’re extremely easy to access and are advertised on social media. In schools, children use nudify apps to bully classmates with disastrous results for both the bullies and the victims, and school administrators are often unprepared for how to deal with students using these wildly popular apps. 

Google and Apple did not immediately respond to 404 Media’s request for comment. TTP wrote that Apple declined to comment, while Google spokesperson Dan Jackson told them many of the apps identified by TTP have been suspended. "When violations of our policies are reported to us, we investigate and take appropriate action," Jackson told TTP.