The Presidential Office plans to spend NT$130 million (US$4 million) renovating the main mansion of a former official residence of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and his second wife Soong Mei-ling (宋美齡) in Shihlin (士林官邸) and to open it to the public by 2008.
The Department of Public Affairs at the Presidential Office said that Presidential Office Secretary-General Mark Chen (陳唐山) had recently inspected the building and hoped to see the main mansion managed and maintained by the Taipei City Government.
The restoration project is scheduled for completion by 2008.
The Presidential Office has maintained the mansion since Chiang died in 1975.
With the exception of the main mansion, the complex was open to the public in 1996 when President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) was mayor of Taipei.
The department said that the cataloging of valuables inside the main mansion is almost complete.
They include a wide variety of old Chinese and foreign furniture, valuable antiques and paintings of the Chiangs.
It is still unclear in what form the mansion will be opened to the public. The city has planned to make it into a center for the study of the lives and times of the couple but others have proposed turning the building into a memorial museum.
The Presidential Office said that they would not have an answer until they had discussed the matter with the city government, the Chiang family, the Council of Cultural Affairs and Academia Historica.
Once the heart of power, the building is nestled among lush trees and was designated as a cultural heritage site by the Taipei City Government in 2000 and by the Ministry of the Interior last year.
Its former residents -- Chiang and Soong -- lived in the house for 26 years before Chiang's death in 1975.
While the outer and middle gardens in front of the building were opened in 1996, the mansion was closed to the public.
Soong lived in New York after her husband's death in 1975, the mansion remained closed off to respect her wishes and privacy. She died in October 2003.
The main building is part of a compound, which includes a guest house, a church, a pagoda, and a garden.
Built in 1950, the two-story main building was the second official residence for the Chiangs after they relocated to Taiwan from China in 1949 with the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) forces following their defeat by the Communists in the civil war.
While the front part of the building was built in a Japanese style, the rest was built in a modern Western style.
A spacious ball room, with a maximum capacity of more than 250 people, was built in 1960 to entertain guests. Prestigious visitors who were entertained there include former US presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon.
Standing on top of Fushan (福山, or Fortune Mountain), the pagoda -- Tzuyunting (慈雲亭), was built in 1963 in memory of Chiang's mother, who is buried in a family graveyard in his hometown of Cian (慈庵) in Zhejiang Province, China.
The nearby Kaiketang church, was built in 1949 for the Chiangs, both of whom claimed to be devout Christians.
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