Night to remember at museum

Prodita Sabarini, THE JAKARTA POST, JAKARTA | Thu, 02/26/2009 11:14 AM

A community of history enthusiasts is organizing a Saturday night tour around Jakarta’s Old Town, West Jakarta, complete with a sleepover in a museum and a chance to watch the sunrise from the museum’s tower.

The rare event — the group claims it will be the world’s first museum sleepover — aims raise the public’s interest in the city’s history and heritage sites.

Asep Kambali, founder of the Community Concerned with Indonesian History and Culture (KPSB), known as Komunitas Historia, said 60 people would tour the Old Town area Saturday evening, spending the night in Mandiri Museum.

Old Town area was the center of the Batavia administration during the Dutch colonial era. Jakarta was named Batavia under Dutch rule.

The area contains several old buildings, including the former Dutch Batavia town hall, now the Jakarta History Museum. The area spans 1.3 square kilometers, straddling North and West Jakarta.

Asep said the tour would start at Jl. Pintu Besar, once the entry gate to Batavia.

“Old Town Jakarta once had a big door at the street now named Jl. Pintu Besar. It was built in the 1600s by the Dutch East Indies Company. In the 1800s, Daendels destroyed the fort and used the materials for the city’s canals,” Asep said.

Asep was referring to Herman Willem Daendels, the governor general of the Dutch East Indies between 1808 and 1811. Dandels moved the town center to an area called Weltevreden, now Jl. Medan Merdeka.

The group will meet at Mandiri Museum on Jl. Pintu Besar. The museum, which was built in the late 1920s, was once the building of Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij (NHM) or Factorji Batavia, a trade company from the Netherlands.

The group will continue to Bank Indonesia Museum, which was built in 1928, and then pass Jl. Kali Besar, a street that has historical buildings from the 19th century.

They will stop at the Fatahillah Museum or Jakarta History Museum and continue to Cipta Niaga building, built in 1912. Asep said the building was in a fragile state and was a popular place to film horror movies.

“Not that I don’t agree with films being shot there, but people should also appreciate the building’s architecture and history,” he said.

Asep said the group would explore the building with flashlights.

A discussion on the participants’ aspirations for the preservation of Old Town, will be held after the film.

“The participants will sleep in sleeping bags. Then we will wake up at dawn to watch the sunrise from the museum’s tower,” he said.

Asep said they announced the event on their website komunitashistoria.blogspot.com and through their mailing list last week.

Three days after the announcement, the tour was fully booked.

“A lot of people still ask about the tour — up to 250 people,” he said. Participants were charged Rp 65,000 for the tour.

Asep, a history graduate from the State University of Jakarta, founded Komunitas Historia in 2003. The community is well-known for its heritage trips, Jakarta Trails and Jakarta Night Trails, and has a mailing list with some 3,000 subscribers.