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Keelung (/kiːˈlʊŋ/ kee-LUUNG; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Ke-lâng), Chilung or Jilong (/dʒiːˈlʊŋ/ jee-LUUNG; pinyin: Jīlóng), officially known as Keelung City, is a major port city situated in the northeastern part of Taiwan. With 361,082 inhabitants, the city is a part of the Taipei–Keelung metropolitan area, along with its neighbors, New Taipei City and Taipei, respectively. Before the city was founded by the Spanish Empire in 1626, then called La Santisima Trinidad, present-day Keelung was inhabited by Taiwanese indigenous peoples and was part of Spanish and Dutch colonial rule before being subsumed into the Qing dynasty in 1683 as part of Fujian. The city became a flashpoint of the First Opium War and the Keelung Campaign in the Sino-French War. Taiwan was detached from Fujian in 1887 and Keelung became part of the Empire of Japan in 1895 following the First Sino-Japanese War. During the Japanese era, the city was known as Kirun first as a town of Taihoku Prefecture, then became a district in 1920 and finally a city in 1924. After World War II in 1945, the Republic of China, which deposed the Qing several years before, reestablished Keelung as a provincial city of Taiwan Province, which would later became streamlined from 1998. Nicknamed the Rainy Port for its frequent rain and maritime role, the city is Taiwan's second largest seaport (after Kaohsiung) and the 7th largest in the world.
