bandung

Bandung is a city in West Java, Indonesia. Located in the central highlands at an altitude of 768m, the city is known for its many universities, textile industry and many roadside cafes. Called Parijs van Java (Paris of Java) by the Dutch, its high altitude location makes the weather pleasantly cool. The food in Bandung is also well known for its wide variety. Thanks to all of this, Bandung is a very popular weekend escape for Jakartans, who crowd into the city on weekends and national holidays.

Bandung’s nickname is Kota Kembang, literally meaning the Flower City. However, this has nothing to do with horticulture: Bandung’s “flowers” are its famously beautiful girls.

Although the oldest written reference to the city dates back to 1488, there are numerous archaeological finds of Australopithecus (Java Man) living on the banks of Cikapundung river and the shores of the Great Lake of Bandung.

In the 17th-18th century, the Dutch East Indies Company (VOC) created small plantations in Bandung, with a road to Batavia (today’s Jakarta) completed in 1786. In 1809, Louis Napoleon, the ruler of the Netherlands and its colonies, ordered the Dutch Indies Governor H.W. Daendels to improve Java’s defenses against the threat of the English, who occupied the nearby Malay peninsula. Daendels responded by building the Great Post Road (Postweg), which stretched about 1000 km between the west and east costs of Java. As much of the north coast was impassable swamp and marsh at the time, the road was diverted through Bandung along what is now Jalan Asia-Afrika.

Daendels liked Bandung’s strategic location so much that he ordered the capital to be moved there. Military barracks were built and Bupati Wiranatakusumah II, the chief administrator of that area, built hisdalem (palace), Masjid Agung (the grand mosque) and pendopo(meeting place) in the classical Javan alun-alun (city square) stule near a pair of holy city wells (Sumur Bandung) and facing the mystical mountain of Tangkuban Perahu.

Powered by its plantations of cinchona (for malaria drug quinine), tea and coffee, Bandung prospered and developed into an exclusive European resort style with hotels, cafes and shops. Many of Bandung’s landmarks, including the Preanger and Savoy Homann hotels as well as the shopping street of Jalan Braga, date to this time. The Concordia Society, now Gedung Merdeka, was built with a large ball room as a club for rich Europeans at the weekends.

In 1880, the first major railroad between Jakarta to Bandung was opened, boosting light industry and bringing in Chinese workers. The first of Bandung’s universities, theTechnische Hogeschool(TH) was established on July 3, 1920. Now known as theInstitut Teknologi Bandung (ITB), TH’s alumni include independence leader and first president Soekarno.

In 1942, after Japanese soldiers landed in coastal areas of Java, the Dutch retreated from Jakarta to Bandung, but were driven out from there as well and surrendered soon after. After the end of the war, the Dutch returned with a vengeance and on March 24, 1946, during the struggle for Indonesian independence, the city of Bandung was burned down by its own residents (Bandung Lautan Api), with over 200,000 people leaving the city.

In 1955, the Asia Africa Conference (Konferensi Asia Afrika) was held in Bandung, paving the way for the creation of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961 The Indonesian parliament was held in Bandung from 1955 to 1966, but was moved back to Jakarta in 1966.

Orientation

Today’s Bandung is a sprawling city of 2.7 million people and suffers from many of the same problems as other Indonesian cities. Traffic is congested, old buildings have been torn down and once idyllic residences turned into supermarkets and banks.

Jalan Asia-Afrika, the former Grote Postweg, remains one of Bandung’s main thoroughfares and connects together the alun-alun(city square) with many of the city’s colonial landmarks