【Introduction】

Built in 1912 (the 1st year of Emperor Taisho) during the Japanese colonial period, the Old Tainan District Courthouse was one of the three local courts established under a two-tier judicial system. The courthouse was designed by an engineer named Moriyama Matsunosuke working at the Taiwan Governor-General’s Office. The location of the building was in the Ningnan district of Chengtian Prefecture and had been a camp for the cavalry when Taiwan was under the Koxinga regime and his successors in the 17th century. To represent the difference between the matters of court judges and those of prosecutors, two main entrances were set up for the courthouse. The entrance representing the court judge features a pediment porch that extends outward supported by massive columns. A vestibule was built in the areas where the porch and the main building intersect, and on top of it a tall square tower rose. The vestibule representing the prosecutor side is topped with a wider and lower octagonal ribbed vaulted dome. By using towers with different heights but equal mass to present an asymmetric composition, this arrangement not only offered spaces for different functions but also emphasized a breakaway from the left-right symmetry characterized by the Renaissance style. This magnificent building complex was considered a masterpiece at that time and has become a very important landmark in Tainan. It was built in a late Renaissance style with a Mansard roof, on which a row of circular dormers protrude. There are elongated windows installed on the wall, and the panes of the windows are surfaced with a washed granolithic finish in relief geometric patterns. The tall square tower was dismantled in 1969 because serious cracks were found in the structure.

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