Bandung

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Overview

Bandung is a city of punks and prayer, serious religion and serious coffee. Here are teeming markets and good shopping, thriving cafes in reclaimed Dutch colonial buildings, palpable warmth and camaraderie on street corners, and traffic everywhere you look. Almost everything great and terrible about Indonesia can be found in Bandung. You may be troubled by the young teens smoking and systemic poverty, and nod with respect at the city's thriving art, shopping and cafe scene. Yes, Bandung has everything, except nature, and after the bottle-green hills of Cibodas, the sprawling bulk of Bandung is quite the urban reality check. But even if the local mountains are cloaked in smog, the city does make a good base for day trips to the surrounding countryside – high volcanic peaks, hot springs and tea plantations are all within reach.

Attractions

Must-see attractions

Selasar Sunaryo Art Space

Bandung

Just outside town in the pretty rural district of Ciburial is this sleek contemporary art gallery. It exhibits both Indonesian and international artists…

Bandung Institute of Technology

Bandung

Opened in 1920, the ITB was the first university open to Indonesians – Sukarno studied here, and it has a reputation for political activism. In 1998, in…

Villa Isola

Bandung

Around 7km north of the centre, Villa Isola is a landmark art deco building, a four-storey villa built by a Dutch media baron in the 1930s as a private…

Museum Konperensi

Bandung

The Museum Konperensi inside the Gedung Merdeka (Freedom Building) is dedicated to the Asia-Africa conference of 1955, which Bandung hosted and the echoes…