Spiraling Rectangle

I admit, I have a thing for staircases. Taking photos of them that is, I hate climbing one. Maybe this is why I often take photos from the base, and only rarely from the top… 🤔

This particular staircase is located in what was once called Fort Zeelandia. An old fort on the south-west coast of Taiwan, in the city of Tainan. It was build between 1724 and 1734 by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) after the were kicked out of the Pescadores Islands for trying to use military force to get the Ming Chinese to trade with them.

They managed to hold on to the fort for a whopping 38 years (that is including the build) until a Ming dynasty-loyalist named Koxinga decided that the Dutch were also no longer welcome there. He sailed up to the fort with 400 warships and 25.000 men, and politely asked the 2.000 Dutch soldiers to vacate the premises. The Dutch, being notoriously stubborn, took the next 9 months to think about it, until they decided to, indeed, leave. The fact that they ran out of fresh drinking water and 1.600 soldiers were killed might have had something to do with it as well…

After the Dutch left the fort became the seat of government for Taiwan, and the fort was renamed King’s Fort. After the area fell out of favor due to the natural harbor silting up, the fort was abandoned and it’s materials used to build the Eternal Golden Castle, located just a kilometer south.

There is not a lot left of the original fort, save for the southern brick wall outside the front gate of the Old Fort, now completely overgrown with the tangled roots of old banyan trees. This wall is build in traditional Dutch red brick imported from Batavia (Jakarta). Most of the inner fort has been rebuild after the World War II, and the entire fort has been renovated in 1975.

This fort is definitely worth a visit!

I hope you enjoy my photos as much as I do. If you do, why not follow me on Instagram: @jackoleenders. It will help me out greatly!