In 1626, the Spanish established Fort San Salvador at present-day Keelung, an area inhabited by Taiwanese indigenous peoples.

The island of Taiwan was ceded to the Empire of Japan in 1895 after the First Sino-Japanese War; under Japanese rule the city was called Kirun.

[4] By the early 20th century, the city was known to the Western world as Kelung,[5] as well as the variants Kiloung, Kilang and Keelung.

[6] In his 1903 general history of Taiwan, US Consul to Formosa (1898–1904) James W. Davidson related that "Kelung" was among the few well-known names, thus warranting no alternate Japanese romanization.

'person'), the noun root being replaced with the common Taiwanese Hokkien term for people, while the domain marker circumfix "ke- -an" being reduced to just the prefix.

[9] In Mandarin, probably the working language of Chinese government at the time, both the old and new names were likely pronounced Gīlóng (hence "Keelung").

[18] During the First Opium War, the British merchant ship Nerbudda shipwrecked near the port of Keelung due to a typhoon in September 1841.

Two senior Chinese officials, Dahonga and Yao Ying, filed a false report to the Daoguang Emperor, claiming to have beaten off a British attack against Keelung.

[21] Around the same time, the name was changed from Ke-lang (雞籠廳) to Kilong (基隆廳), which means "rich and prosperous land".

Liu Mingchuan, who led the defence of Taiwan, recruited Aboriginals to serve alongside the Chinese soldiers in fighting against the French of Colonel Jacques Duchesne's Formosa Expeditionary Corps.

[23][verification needed] A systematic city development started during the Japanese Era, after the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki, which handed all Taiwan over to Japan.

The northern part of the city faces the ocean and is a great deep water harbor since early times.

[28][29] Keelung has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen Cfa) with a yearly rainfall average upwards of 3,700 millimetres (146 in).

[30] Although it is one of the coolest cities of Taiwan, winters are still short and warm, whilst summers are long, relatively dry and hot, temperatures can peek above 26 °C during a warm winter day, while it can dip below 27 °C during a rainy summer day, much like the rest of northern Taiwan.

However its location on northern mountain slopes means that due to orographic lift, rainfall is heavier during fall and winter, the latter during which a northeasterly flow prevails.

The Keelung Ghost Festival is among the oldest in Taiwan, dating back to 1851 after bitter clashes between rival clans, which claimed many lives before mediators stepped in.