Jakarta hides its past behind the flyovers: a Sundanese harbour the Portuguese bargained for in 1522, Dutch warehouses that emptied into Amsterdam, and the rooms where 1945 was argued out overnight. Three days, chronological.
Sunda Kelapa was the Sundanese pepper port where Portugal signed its 1522 treaty and Fatahillah landed in 1527, renaming it Jayakarta. Wooden pinisi schooners from Sulawesi still unload by hand; open 07:00–18:00.
The museum occupies VOC spice warehouses raised 1652–1771 against the old city wall, where nutmeg, pepper and coffee were stockpiled for Amsterdam. Teak beams, a 2018 fire's scars, and models of Bugis trading craft.
Finished in 1695 for Mardijkers — freed Portuguese-speaking slaves taken from Malacca and Ceylon — this is Jakarta's oldest standing church, with its original ebony pulpit, brass chandeliers and Baroque organ case.
The families here descend from Portuguese captives the VOC resettled in 1661 and converted; their church dates to 1748. They still keep Papia Tugu phrases in song and play keroncong tugu on the small cak and cuk lutes.
Admiral Maeda's Art Deco villa on Jalan Imam Bonjol 1 is where Sukarno, Hatta and the youth leaders hammered out the proclamation text through the night of 16–17 August 1945. The typing room is preserved.
Jalan Pegangsaan Timur 56 is where Sukarno read the proclamation at 10:00 on 17 August 1945. He had the house demolished in 1960; the 1961 Tugu Petir lightning column and 1980 bronzes of Sukarno and Hatta stand on the lawn.
The 1899 STOVIA medical school trained the first Javanese doctors, and on 20 May 1908 its students founded Budi Utomo in a lecture hall here — the conventional start of Indonesian nationalism. Wards and dorms are dressed to period.
This was Waterlooplein, the Dutch garrison parade ground. The 1963 bronze of a man snapping his chains was ordered by Sukarno during the campaign to take Papua from the Netherlands; fountains and floodlights run to 22:00.
Kebon Jahe Kober cemetery opened in 1795 and keeps about 1.300 headstones: Olivia Mariamne Raffles, who died of fever in 1814, VOC officials, and epitaphs cut in Dutch, Latin, Portuguese and Hebrew under frangipani trees.
Governor-General Reinier de Klerk built this country house in 1760 beside the Molenvliet canal, when the walled city had grown too malarial to live in. Dutch donors funded its rescue from demolition in 1990.
An early-1800s villa that passed from a French owner to a Turkish consul and then a labour union now holds some 2.000 textiles: Cirebon megamendung batik, Sumbanese hinggi burial cloths and Palembang songket woven with gold thread.
Menteng was laid out from 1910 by P.A.J. Moojen as the Indies' first garden suburb, and its villas still line the streets. Jalan Surabaya's stalls trade VOC-marked brass, Dutch case-gin bottles, wayang puppets and gramophone horns.