Cool highland Java hosted Asia-Africa's 1955 summit
Bandung, capital of West Java, sits about 700 metres up in a basin ringed by volcanoes, giving it one of the coolest climates of any Indonesian provincial capital. Dutch tea estates and an 1880 rail line from Batavia turned it into a European resort, and in 1955 Sukarno hosted the first Asian-African Conference there.
The area is first mentioned in 1488, though a Homo erectus population once lived by the Cikapundung River and the prehistoric lake that filled the basin. That lake formed around 55,000 BCE, when an eruption of the ancient volcano Mount Sunda blocked the Citarum River; geologists still argue over why it drained. Volcanic soils in the hilly north now feed rice, tea, tobacco and coffee, and from the city the flat-topped Tangkuban Perahu, the upside-down boat, fills the northern skyline.
The Great Post Road, ordered in 1809 so Java could resist a British invasion, reached Bandung in 1810. The 1880 railway drew Chinese traders whose quarter still stands near the station. Planters came on weekends, Braga Street filled with shops selling Paris fashion, and the town earned the nickname Paris of Java. Because the surrounding mountains offered natural defences, officials in the 1920s began moving the colonial capital here, raising barracks and the Gedung Sate, a government office named for the satay-shaped ornament on its roof. Henri Maclaine Pont designed the first technical college in the Indies, crowning its hall with a Sundanese roof. War ended the relocation.
During the revolution, retreating Indonesian forces set much of southern Bandung ablaze on 24 March 1946 rather than yield to a British ultimatum. In 1955 leaders of 29 Asian and African states met in the former Concordia clubhouse, issuing a ten-point declaration against colonialism, often called the first international gathering of people of colour.
Today the metropolis packs about 16,500 people per square kilometre, yet in 2017 it won an ASEAN award for the cleanest air among major cities.
Source: Bandung
