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Located just a few minutes' walk from Taichung's old train station, Miyahara almost always appears on the city's "must-visit" lists. During the day, it's packed with tourists lining up for ice cream and pineapple cake. In the evening, the warm yellow lights illuminating the red brick facade make the building look more like an old European library than a pastry shop.
Miyahara perfectly reflects Taiwan's urban preservation philosophy: not confining heritage to museums, but bringing history back to life through commerce, tourism, and consumer experiences.
The Miyahara building has been restored to life today, becoming a popular destination for Taiwanese and international tourists.
From the largest eye clinic in Taichung during the Japanese era.
Miyahara was founded in 1927 by Japanese physician Miyahara Takeo during the period when Taiwan was under Japanese rule. At that time, it was one of the largest and most modern eye clinics in central Taiwan. The name “宮原眼科” (Miyahara Ophthalmology) has remained unchanged to this day; the last two characters “眼科” in Chinese mean “ophthalmology”.
After World War II, when Japan withdrew from Taiwan, the building was taken over and used for various purposes, including a period as a local health agency. However, over the decades, the structure gradually deteriorated significantly. The 921 earthquake in 1999 further damaged the area, and the building was almost completely abandoned.
The building's exterior has been preserved as a historical landmark in the heart of Taichung, an area surrounded by many other modern buildings and structures.
A building of such age would normally have ended up being demolished to make way for new skyscrapers. But in Taichung, Miyahara is entering a different phase.
The "rebirth" transformed Taichung.
In 2010, the renowned bakery brand Dawn Cake acquired the building and undertook a comprehensive renovation. Instead of erasing the old features, they preserved almost entirely the original architecture, including the red brick walls, large arched doorways, and classic facade. This decision is what gave Miyahara its soul today.
Miyahara's design is a blend of Japanese colonial style, European retro, and modern art exhibition, but many visitors call Miyahara the "Hogwarts of Taichung" (Hogwarts being the school of magic in the Harry Potter films). And while it's a bit of an exaggeration, that feeling truly exists once you step inside.
Standing in the space of Miyahara, visitors feel as if they are somewhere in London, Tokyo, or an ancient European library from a fantasy film, with high ceilings, multi-tiered wooden shelves, warm brass lighting, a spiral staircase, and countless boxes neatly arranged like precious artifacts.
Miyahara gives you the feeling of being in the middle of London or lost in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry from Harry Potter.
More importantly, Miyahara understands very well that modern tourists don't just buy products; they buy the experience and emotions that come with them. Therefore, everything here is carefully "staged": from the way the chocolates are displayed and the design of the pastry boxes to the lighting and the flow of movement inside the store.
Many visitors to Miyahara don't simply come to eat dessert. They come to take photos, to observe the space, and to experience a version of Taiwan that is both classic and modern, something that is hard to find in newer shopping malls.
Its blend of classical and modern architecture makes this building a "must-visit" destination for tourists visiting Taichung.
The packaging is so beautiful that it becomes a reason to buy.
If there's one thing that helped Miyahara transcend the boundaries of a famous bakery, it's its product packaging design.
The pineapple cake, chocolate, and tea boxes here are designed like antique book covers, jewelry boxes, or vintage suitcases. The typography, colors, and paper quality all evoke the feeling of the early 20th century, rather than the modern minimalist style often seen in Asian F&B brands.
That was Miyahara's clever strategy: turning the product into a souvenir. Buyers weren't just taking home a box of cookies, but a carefully packaged travel experience.
This model is particularly well-suited to Taiwan, where the culture of gift-giving and purchasing local specialties is already highly developed. Therefore, despite the higher-than-average prices at Miyahara, the place remains consistently crowded.
The bakery's retro-style packaging is what made it famous.
When an ice cream cone becomes a way to tell the story of Taiwan.
Here, each ice cream cone is like a handcrafted work of art: multiple layers of flavor, intricate toppings, handmade cookies, mini pineapple cakes, chocolate, cheesecake, Taiwanese tea, and even dried flowers decorating the top.
Interestingly, bakeries in Miyahara make a strong use of local ingredients: Oolong tea, Alishan tea, Taiwanese pineapple, cocoa, longan, lychee, sea salt, and traditional beans.
The ice cream and pastries are beautifully presented, rivaling the packaging of other products in the shop.
The ice cream menu features dozens of different flavors that change seasonally. Some flavors sound very "Taiwanese," such as bubble tea, pineapple cake, Sun Moon Lake black tea, smoked longan, and chocolate with Sichuan peppercorns.
However, if you only view Miyahara as a "check-in spot," it's difficult to explain why it has maintained its enduring appeal for over a decade.
What Miyahara does much better than many other tourist destinations is create a unique identity for the city. In a context where many Asian cities are increasingly similar with malls, luxury brands, and international coffee chains, Miyahara offers a feeling that visitors can hardly find elsewhere: a sense of local history retold in a modern language.
The combination of the old building and the new bakery tells visitors the story of the place's history in a modern language.
That is also why Miyahara is often seen as a prime example of the "adaptive reuse" trend in Taiwan – reusing old buildings with new functions instead of demolishing them completely.
Here, the past is not left to gather dust in a museum but continues to live on in a different form: becoming part of the tourism industry, of consumer culture, and of the memories that tourists take home after their trip.
