s the host of the 6th TAFISA World Sport of All Games, Jakarta has the opportunity to promote its destinations to the event's participants that come from 84 countries.
On Monday, all participants were invited to join a city tour that includes Kota Tua heritage site in West and North Jakarta. "As currently the Kota Tua area has been proposed to be recognized as a UNESCO heritage site in 2017, we want to show [the participants] that it is indeed beautiful," the Tourism Ministry's head of top tourist destinations Hiramsyah S. Thaib told tempo.co.
The ministry's coordinator for Thousand Islands and Kota Tua Jakarta priority destinations, Budi Faisal, said the area offered a unique example of the Netherlands' colonial city plan that was inspired by Simon Stevin's ideal city concept. It was in this area that VOC dominated the world's biggest trade volume between the 17th and 18th century.
(Read also: Lives of the living statues of ‘Kota Tua’)
Presently, Kota Tua Jakarta and its four outer islands, namely Onrust, Kelor, Cipir and Bidadari, have been included in the tentative list of UNESCO world heritage sites alongside 17 other sites across the country, including Semarang's Old Town in Central Java, Sawahlunto's coal mining city in West Sumatra, Nagari Sijunjung's traditional Minangkabau villages, also in West Sumatra, and Banda Islands' Historical and Maritime Landscape.
In addition to Jakarta's Old Town, the city administration is also set to take diplomats from Pacific countries like Guam, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to Glodok's Chinatown in West Jakarta on Oct. 13. (fmn/kes)
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