Wen Long Shi, the 90-plus-year-old billionaire founder of Chi Mei Corp, one of the world’s largest producers of LCD panels, poured a significant amount of his own money into building a museum to showcase the Western art that his cultural foundation has been acquiring since 1977. The museum, which opened in 1992, is a huge Neoclassical palace adorned with replicas of Greek and Roman statues, where Shi’s collection of violins, altos, and cellos—the largest in the world—is housed.

As a teenager, Shi taught himself how to play the violin, but it was only in 1990 when he began acquiring rare violins, the first being a 1707 Stradivarius for US$1 million. At the museum, more than 1,750 instruments are displayed alongside ancient weapons and armour, Western paintings and sculptures, historical artefacts from ancient civilizations, and taxidermied animals from all over the world. The foundation loans out the violins for free, but the insurance fees can reach up to millions of dollars.