Jogja is Indonesia's art capital: 100+ galleries, four art academies and a sultanate that still funds gamelan orchestras and classical dance. This route covers contemporary spaces, court music and the silver and batik workshops that supply them.
Riverside home-studio of Affandi (1907-1990), Indonesia's most celebrated expressionist, who painted by squeezing oils straight from the tube. Three galleries hold 300+ works; his banana-leaf-shaped house and grave sit in the garden. Open 09:00-16:00, closed Sundays.
Founded 1988 by Nindityo Adipurnomo and Mella Jaarsma, the oldest independent contemporary art space in Indonesia and the launchpad for most Jogja artists now shown abroad. Rotating exhibitions, residencies and reading room. Tue-Sat 10:00-17:00.
The 1758 pleasure garden of Sultan Hamengkubuwono I, built by a Portuguese-trained architect: bathing pools for the royal concubines, a tower where the sultan watched, and the Sumur Gumuling underground mosque with its five-staircase acoustic well. Open 09:00-15:00.
The 16th-century capital of the Mataram Sultanate, now a lane-maze of Kalang merchant houses mixing Javanese joglo roofs with Art Deco fronts. The 1587 mosque keeps its Hindu-style split gate and a wall of coral stone. Silver workshops line Jl. Kemasan.
The 1935 Java Institute collection: 43,000 objects including pre-Islamic bronzes, Majapahit gold, keris blades with meteorite-iron pamor, and one of the world's largest wayang collections. The building itself is a joglo by Dutch architect Thomas Karsten. Tue-Sun 08:00-15:30.
Jackfruit stewed overnight in coconut milk and teak leaves until mahogany-brown, served with krecek buffalo-skin stew and areh curd — the dish Jogja defines itself by. Wijilan alley behind the palace wall has served it since the 1940s.
A princely pavilion where Yogyakarta-style classical dance has been taught since 1962. Bedhaya and golek rehearsals run most afternoons with live gamelan; the school also stages full Ramayana evenings. Watching a class is usually permitted on request.
The pavilion on the south square hosts full-length overnight wayang kulit with the Kraton's own dalang and a bronze gamelan ensemble, on the second Saturday of each month from around 21:00 until dawn. Shorter two-hour versions run at Sonobudoyo nightly.
Working silver atelier in the old Mataram capital where smiths hand-solder filigree wire into ships, birds and Borobudur stupas. Free workshop tours show the melting, drawing and blackening stages; two-hour classes let you make a ring. Open 08:00-17:00.
Family workshop since 1946 producing batik tulis with canting wax pens and hand-carved copper caps. You can follow a cloth through waxing, indigo and soga-brown dyeing, and boiling-off in a single visit — the process takes weeks per piece.
The former ASRI fine-art academy campus, now the city's largest independent exhibition hall and home base of the Biennale Jogja and ArtJog. Vast raw halls of installation and street art; the surrounding walls are a permanent mural gallery. Open 09:00-21:00.
Arts compound founded 1978 by dancer-painter Bagong Kussudiardja in the rice fields west of the city, running contemporary dance, gamelan and theatre training and open-air performances in its amphitheatre.