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Traversing the hidden gems of historical Cikini
Just northeast of the quiet and upscale residential area of Menteng is the village of Cikini and its namesake main street, where Jakarta’s silent past and bustling present meet.
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Huize de Vijfsprong is named for the intersection of five streets where it stands in Cikini, Central Jakarta. (JP/Tri Indah Oktavianti)
J
ust across Menteng Huis shopping mall are restaurants housed in structures with large windows of the neoclassical architectural style, redolent of the Dutch colonial era as they stand in a row along their bustling, modern surroundings on Jl. Cikini.
The street in Central Jakarta is where Jakarta’s past and present meet. And while its historical and aesthetic value is visible to the naked eye, Cikini is just another street to almost everyone who rushes by.
Moved by its concerns for the capital's forgotten history, the Indonesia Hidden Heritage (IHH) preservation community hosted last Sunday a tour to promote awareness of the village's wealth of history: “Trip to Cikini: The Other Side of the Story”.
Dozens of people who shared an interest in the city’s past, which rarely finds mention in the history textbooks used at schools, took part in the walking tour down Cikini's memory lane.
Ati Argunadi, 61, recalled when, as a girl in the 1960s, she visited Jakarta’s first zoo, Taman Raden Saleh. It was the one thing she knew about "old Cikini" before the tour.
Taman Raden Saleh was founded in the 1860s, according to Indonesian Hidden Heritage. In 1966, the zoo was relocated to a 140-hectare tract of land in Ragunan, South Jakarta. Its former site in Cikini, which once belonged to renowned 19th century Indonesian painter Raden Saleh, is now part of the Taman Ismail Marzuki (TIM) arts center.
“I am interested in history and photography. Jakarta has a lot of history that is little known, and it is all interesting,” said Ati, who lives in Depok, West Java.
