Scope

Taipei 101 is the standard tourist circuit and this report does not pretend otherwise. Its use is navigational: what occupies each level, what each ticket tier actually buys, and which parts are weather-dependent in November. No. 7, Sec. 5, Xinyi Road, Xinyi District. MRT Taipei 101/World Trade Center (Red Tamsui-Xinyi Line) connects directly into B1.

Correction to a common assumption up front. Taipei 101 has five basement levels, but the underground mall is B1 and only B1. B2–B4 are car parks — over 1,000 car spaces, with roughly 1,500 motorcycle spaces on B2 — and B5 is plant. There is no multi-level basement shopping warren here. The mall is five levels running B1 to 4F, of which exactly one is underground.

The Building

  • Height: 508 m architectural, 509.2 m to the tip of the spire. Sources differ on which figure they quote.
  • 101 floors above ground, 5 below. Completed 2004.
  • World's tallest building 2004–2010, until the Burj Khalifa.
  • Total floor area approximately 374,000 m².
  • Structure: eight mega-columns, two per face, each 3 m × 2.4 m in section, running continuously from B5 to the 90th floor, filled with high-density concrete and clad in steel plate.
  • Architect: C.Y. Lee & Partners (李祖原聯合建築師事務所).

Vertical Section

Schematic vertical section of Taipei 101 showing what occupies each band of floors A stacked column diagram from the basement car parks at the bottom to the spire at the top, with bands for the B1 mall, floors 1 to 4 retail, floor 5 observatory ticketing, three office bands separated by sky lobbies at floors 35 and 59, restaurants at 85 to 87, the damper and observatory decks at 88 to 91, and Skyline 460 at floor 101. 508 m GROUND 101F 91F 89F 88F 85F 59F 35F 5F B1 B5 101F — Skyline 460, outdoor, +10 m above the deck 92–100F — mechanical and private floors 91F — outdoor deck, opens by weather 89F — indoor observatory 88F — the 660-tonne tuned mass damper 85–87F — restaurants 60–84F — offices 59F — sky lobby 36–58F — offices 35F — sky lobby 6–34F — offices 5F — observatory ticketing and entry 1–4F — mall: 101大道 · 時尚大道 · 名人大道 · 都會廣場 B1 — 生活聚場. The whole underground mall. MRT link. B2–B5 — car parks and plant. No shops.

Schematic, not to scale. Band depths are set for legibility, not proportional to floor counts — the 79 office floors are compressed and the public floors are enlarged. Floor numbers and what occupies them are accurate; relative heights are not.

The Mall — Five Levels, One Underground

Retail runs B1 to 4F under named zones. Hours: Sunday–Thursday 11:00–21:30, Friday–Saturday 11:00–22:00.

B1 — 生活聚場 · food and everyday retail, MRT concourse link
1F — 101大道 · popular brands, tea houses, souvenir counters
2F — 時尚大道 · fashion
3F — 名人大道 · luxury houses and high watchmaking
4F — 都會廣場 · leisure, casual restaurants
5F · not retail — observatory ticket desk and the lift lobby

Levels 1 to 3 are largely international luxury: Rolex, Omega, Montblanc, Chanel Beauty, YSL Beauté, and an Apple store. If you are not shopping those brands, the levels worth your time are B1 and 4F.

B1 — The Underground Mall

Over 30 food outlets, split between a shared-seating food court and independent shopfronts that take their own bookings. The genuinely unusual thing about B1 is not any single stall but the compression: a Michelin-starred Singapore hawker, a seventy-year-old Chiayi clay-pot institution and a Hakata ramen chain are all in one basement, when reaching them otherwise means three separate journeys across Asia.

了凡香港油雞飯麵 (Hawker Chan) — the Singapore soy-sauce chicken rice stall that became the first hawker stall in the world to hold a Michelin star. This is the outlet on B1 worth crossing the city for, because there is no equivalent anywhere else in Taipei.
林聰明沙鍋魚頭 — the Chiayi clay-pot fish head house, roughly 70 years old and a genuine southern Taiwanese institution. Ordinarily a 3.5-hour round trip to Chiayi; here it is a basement counter.
一風堂 (Ippudo) — Hakata tonkotsu ramen. 美利港式茶檔 — Hong Kong-style tea shop, silky egg with shrimp over rice and croissant egg tarts. 1010湘 — Hunanese. 勝博殿 (Saboten) — Japanese tonkatsu.
鼎泰豐 (Din Tai Fung), B1 — recorded here for completeness of the floor guide rather than as a recommendation. The 101 branch is one of the busiest in the city; the Xinyi flagship and other branches carry the same kitchen standard with shorter waits.
JASONS Market Place, B1 — an import-focused supermarket, and the useful one on this level. This was the brand's first store in Taiwan, opened November 2003, and it remains the flagship. Open 09:00–22:00, so it is trading two hours before the rest of the mall opens. The practical stop for imported goods, packaged food gifts and anything you cannot find in a convenience store.
吳寶春麥方店 — the bakery of the baker who won the Bakery World Cup in 2010. Opens 10:00, ahead of the mall.

Food-court rosters turn over. The names above were current at the time of checking; verify on the mall's own floor guide before making a special trip for any one of them. Independent shopfronts take reservations by phone or online and are worth booking at peak hours.

The Damper — 88F

The single most interesting object in the building, and it is included in the cheapest ticket.

  • 660 tonnes, 5.5 m diameter — the largest and heaviest tuned mass damper of its kind.
  • Built from 41 stacked steel plates, welded into a sphere.
  • Suspended from the 92nd floor down to the 87th, restrained by eight hydraulic viscous dampers.
  • It works by inertia: the sphere resists moving when the tower does, and the lag between them produces a counterforce that cancels the sway.
  • Taipei 101 was the first building in the world to make its damper a visible architectural feature rather than hiding it in a plant room. That decision is why it is a tourist attraction and not an engineering footnote.

The mascots sold throughout the building — Damper Baby, a set of five characters — came out of a collaboration with Sanrio, Hello Kitty's owner. They are the building's own merchandise and exist nowhere else.

The Lifts — 5F to 89F

  • Two dedicated observatory lifts, built by Toshiba Elevator and Building Systems with Taiwan's GFC (崇友實業).
  • 1,010 m/min ascending — 5F to 89F in 37 seconds.
  • Aerodynamic car bodies, cabin pressure control, and the world's first triple-stage overspeed protection system. Roughly NTD 80 million per car.
  • Guinness world record for fastest lift, awarded 2004. Superseded by the Shanghai Tower in 2016 — the claim you will see on signage is historical.

Observatory — Tickets and What Each Tier Buys

Hours: 10:00–21:00 daily. Last admission 20:15. Ticketing and entry on 5F.
  • 89F standard — NTD 600. Admits to 88F (damper), 89F (indoor deck) and 91F (outdoor deck). This is the tier most visitors want.
  • 89F + 101F — NTD 980. Adds the indoor 101st floor.
  • Fast pass — NTD 1,200. Queue priority.
  • Skyline 460 — NTD 3,000. An outdoor walk on the roof deck roughly 10 m above 101F, at about 460 m. Advance booking required. Price includes 88/89/91F, the 101F indoor deck and the NTD 1,200 fast pass, so the marginal cost of the roof walk itself is around NTD 1,800.
  • Children under 6 or under 115 cm: free.
91F and Skyline 460 are weather-dependent and close in rain or high wind. Both are outdoor. The NTD 600 ticket still buys 88F and 89F if 91F is shut, but Skyline 460 is the entire product at NTD 3,000 — book it only against a forecast you trust, and confirm the refund or rebooking terms at the time of booking.

Bearing on Nov 2–6 2026

Nothing here closes during the window. The mall and observatory trade every day. Mon 2 – Thu 5 Nov run mall hours 11:00–21:30; Fri 6 Nov extends to 22:00. The observatory is 10:00–21:00 throughout.
The weather is the live risk, not the calendar. Early November sits under the northeast monsoon — roughly 15–17 rain days in the month, persistent drizzle, and low cloud that can sit at observatory height. On a bad day the outdoor decks close and the indoor decks look into grey.

Treat Taipei 101 as a flexible slot, not a fixed booking. Keep it unscheduled, watch the forecast across the five days, and go on the clearest one. This is the opposite of the advice for the timed and dated items elsewhere in this topic.

From Finders Hotel Fu Qian the journey is MRT Red Line from NTU Hospital or Taipei Main Station direct to Taipei 101/World Trade Center, surfacing inside B1. No interchange.

Sources: building structure, height, mega-column and damper specifications per Taipei 101 corporate material and encyclopaedic records; damper and Damper Baby per Taipei 101's own explore pages and Taiwanese press; lift specification and the 2004 Guinness award per Toshiba/GFC statements and contemporaneous reporting, with the 2016 Shanghai Tower supersession noted; mall zone names, floor allocation and parking levels per Taipei 101 mall material and Taiwanese travel press; observatory tiers and pricing per current 2026 ticketing guides; JASONS store history per the brand's own account. Checked 5 Aug 2026. Ticket prices and food-court tenancies both move — reconfirm in late October before booking.