Heritage Night Tour: Jakarta, West Java

With the night still young, the bustle on Jl. Pasar Ikan 1, North Jakarta, begins as traders prepare for business. Few would expect it, but behind the activity of the night market sits another of the city’s unnoticed and unappreciated historical buildings.

The Maritime Museum building is marked by little more than a simple wooden name plate hanging off the gate in front of the building’s strong European edifice as the article in the Jakarta Post explains.

The three-and-a-half-century old building, which was built in 1652, still stands strong today.

Entering the compound, one is struck by the mildewy air, the paint that has peeled off most of the walls and the doors dangling off their hinges.

The building initially served as a spice warehouse during the Dutch colonial era. It was changed into a museum in July 1977 by then governor Ali Sadikin.

The museum has a collection of around 1,670 maritime artifacts, including traditional Indonesian boats, each marked by specific shapes, equipment and decorative trimmings; miniatures of modern ships; navigational tools; and a model lighthouse.

According to a local guide, Sukmawijaya, the area around the museum was once a very busy district of Batavia, as Jakarta used to be known.

About 50 meters away stands Syahbandar Tower, a lookout for ships arriving and departing from Sunda Kelapa harbor. The tower, built in 1839, bears a banner reading “This is where Jakarta began”. The message is not mere hyperbole.

Carving stones engraved with Chinese characters sit on the right of the tower indicating the old center and zero point of Batavia.
According to Sukma, in its colonial heyday, the city was the center of a trading network spreading from Nagasaki, Japan, to Capetown, South Africa.

“The spot was then chosen as a starting point to measure distances between Batavia and neighboring cities from 1630 until the government decided to move the zero point to the National Monument in Central Jakarta in 1985,” said Sukma.

Next to the zero point carving stones is another carving stone, also written in Chinese, announcing the arrival of a Chinese admiral to Indonesia.

Sukma said no one had as yet fully translated the ancient Chinese lettering on the stone.

“There were several people who tried to translate the writing but no one could translate it entirely,” he said.