Lying on the western side of the northern Alun-alun is the Great Mosque. The building was designed by the court architect Wiryokusumo on order of Sultan Hamengku Buwono I and completed on 29th May 1773. Two plaques, inscribed in Arabic and Javanese, are displayed on the walls of the Mosque and mark the date of it’s completion.
Built in 1758 as a recreation area for Yogyakarta’s royal family, the ‘Water Castle’ Tamansari lies a little to the south west of the Kraton. Although mostly in ruins, brought about by time, neglect and an earthquake in 1867, Tamansari is still an interesting place to see. Visitor can walk through a maze of underground passageways leading down to dark and mysterious rooms, long since deserted. Two large bathing pools apparently used by princesses from the palace, are still visible but no longer in use. Tamansari once had to long to tunnels, one of which was connected to the Kraton , the other surfacing some distance outside the city, some say as far away as Parangtririts. This second one was built as an escape route in the event of danger. Today many batik artist live long Tamansari’s narrow pathways.
The Sultan’s Palace
Kraton Ngayogyakarta Hadiningrat, the Sultan’s Palace, is located at the southern eng of Jalan Ahmad Yani. The Kraton is the heart of city of Yogya and covers an area of one square kilometer surrounded by a wall. It is in a sense a city within the city, housing some 25,000 residents, many of them artisans producing traditional craft likes batik cloth, silver wares, wayang puppets and masks. Construction of the complex began in 1755, following the devision of the kingdom of Mataram, and continued for nearly forty years. The innermost group of buildings, known as Proboyekso, is still the private resident of the reigning Sultan and his family. Here are kept many ancient pusaka or scared heirlooms. The reception hall, Bangsal Kencana, is a beautiful structure displaying exquisitely carved teak pillars and painted rafters. It was completed in in 1792. A small museum exhibition some of the palace treasures, including gifts from European monarchs. Outside, in the Sri Manganti courtyard, two pendopo , traditional Javanese open sided building , countain four sets of gamelan instruments dating back to the 14th and 15th centuries. Also on view are gilded palanquins and sedan chairs, as well as an ancient bedug , the drum used to call Muslims to prayer.
On the northern and southern sides of the main palace buildings are large grassy areas known as Alun alun . In the middle of each stand two banyan trees, which are said to ‘guard’ the Kraton. Today, much of kraton is open to public and on Sundays visitors have the opportunity to watch classical dance rehearsals there.
The island of Java is the fifth largest in Indonesia after Kalimantan, Sumatra, West Irian and Sulawesi. Roughly the size of England, it supports a population of about eight million. Representing more than half of the nation’s total. A third of the inhabitants live the narrow, middle section of the provinces of Central Java, with it’s capital at Semarang, and the Special Region of Yogyakarta.
This is the home of the true Javanese, as opposed to the Sundanese who inhabit the western part of the island and have their own language and customs. Most people are engaged in agriculture and live away from the city centres. More than sixty percent of the land is used for intensive wet rice cultivation dry hillside farming and plantation corps, while a further twenty percent accounts for forested areas of mostly teak and pine. The landscape is one of great variety and natural beauty. Inland, smouldering volcanic peaks sweep upwards to height of more than 3000 metres, from where numerous river flow down through rich and fertile plaints of the sea. Only in the north east of Central Java and on Yogyakarta’s southern coast is the soil less productive. Here, arid and inhospitable limestone ranges are unsuitable for agriculture and consequently support relatively small populations.
Although Indonesia is still basically an agricultural nation, the last twenty years have seen the development of a number of important industries, such as the production of cement and fertilizers, ship-building, electronics and motor assembly, textiles and pharmaceuticals. Apart from these, the country has a rich supply of natural resources, including oil and natural gas as well as large quantities of timber and marine products.
Indonesia today is one of the world’s leading producers of crude oil. Tourism, too, is beginning to emerge as an important economic factor, the number of foreign visitors to the country having increased by about fifty percent over the last five years.
Indonesia has population of around 2.370.000 (sensus penduduk 2010), making it the fifth most populous country in the world after China, India, the United States and the Soviet Union. Well over half of this total live on the island of Java, too, can be found the nation’s commercial and administrative capital, the city of Jakarta, which supports about eight million residents.
Islam is the predominant religion, accounting for approximately 87% of the population. There are a number of largely Christian areas, notably Manado in northern Sulawesi, parts of the Moluccas and the eastern islands of the archipelagos, as well as the Batak region of north Sumatra. Exceptional is the island of Bali, which has retained a syncretic Hindu/Buddhist faith up to the present day. In isolated regions the remnants of early , pre-Hindu animistic cultures can still be found.
‘Unity in Diversity’ is the motto of the Republic of Indonesia. This is certainly appropriate for a nation consisting of more than three hundred ethnic groups, each with its own peculiar manners and customs, languages/dialect and style of dress. These diverse peoples are today bound together by a common language, Bahasa Indonesia, and share a common outlook and attitude towards life, which is clearly expressed in the doctrine of Panca Sila (the five principles), the foundation of the national ideology.
For centuries, the fable south eastern island lured pilgrims, traders, adventurers and fortune seekers, who returned to their homelands with tales of strange customs, fabulous beasts and boundless wealth.
Marco Polo, who passed through region at the end of the 13th century reported that Java was “the biggest island in the world” and that the wealth contained the there was ‘ beyond all computation’ . While his estimations of the size of the island turned out to be incorrect, his second observation might not have been exaggeration.
Today, with modern methods of transport and communication, visitors to Indonesia can discover for themselves the wealth contained there in the forms of history, tradition, culture, adventure, as well as sheer natural beauty.
This blog offer the visitor a glimpse of just two of Indonesia’s 33 provinces : Central Java, an ancient land of towering volcanos and swift-flowing river, and Yogyakarta, the ‘Culture Garden of Java’ .
