When Chiang Kai-shek’s army fled from China to Taiwan, soldiers brought along the best of their culture from the mainland. Besides absconding with 3,000 cases of art that belonged to the emperors, the refugees brought local foods from all over China and an energy that built one of the world’s most important capitals. A day in Taipei offers the opportunity to sample superlatives: the world’s most exquisite Asian artworks, the best cuisine from all Chinese regions and a zoom to the top of one of the tallest buildings in the world.

Exemplifying the city’s melding of ancient and modern, the beloved Grand Hotel — converted from a Shinto temple into a Chinese-style high-rise with a pert yellow tile roof, shiny red columns and carved gilt screens — is the city’s fondly pompous monument to public hospitality. After breakfast served in your spacious room with Oriental trappings and views out to the city and Keelung River, get an early start to the National Palace Museum, which opens at 8:30 a.m.

The world’s greatest collection of Chinese art, more than 700,000 confiscated treasures from the Forbidden City, is on rotating display. Among the extraordinary not-to-be-missed artifacts are 17 nested, concentric balls elaborately carved from a single piece of ivory; a stalk of bok choy cabbage with its white vegetable body and brilliant green leaves aligned with the color variations in a single piece of jade; and an exquisite tiny boat with eight boatmen and carved screens, all created from a single olive pit barely 1.5 inches in length.

Back downtown, wander awhile in the hub of activity around Old Town Center and stop at the city’s penultimate Longshan Temple, a profusion of colors, garlands, offerings and statues of deities. Nearby, on grounds also housing the National Theater and Concert Hall, the biggest arch in the city, 100 feet high, leads into the massive monument to Chiang Kai-shek, where visitors climb 89 steps to see an oversized statue of the revered leader and duck into the museum where a wax figure of the Generalissimo sits at his desk in a replica office.

Tear yourself away for a feast of steamed pork and crab dumplings at the original celebrated Din Tai Fung restaurant. Casual, with linoleum tables and the initial 40-year-old sign outside, this icon serves delicate morsels weighing no more that 7.5 ounces, each fashioned with 18 folds.

Top off the afternoon at the top, literally, zooming in 40 seconds up to the 89th-floor observation deck of Taipei 101, briefly the tallest building in the world when completed in 2004. On the eighth to the 89th floors, be sure not to miss seeing the massive 660-ton wind damper, a giant steel sphere mounted on cables which absorbs vibrations to reduce the tower’s swaying in the wind. Before going down to the 85th floor for signature fried rice noodles at Shin Yeh, called the city’s “best Taiwanese restaurant,” step back out on the Observation Deck and take in 360-degree views of the city and all the sights, restaurants, monuments and markets to be seen in the diverse metropolis that is Taiwan’s capital city.

Longshan Temple and Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall have their own stops on Taipei’s efficient MRT subway system. From the stop for Taipei City Hall, walk briefly through luxury malls and boutiques to Taipei 101. The National Palace Museum requires hailing taxis back and forth.