Srivijaya’s river capital still straddles the Musi
Palembang, South Sumatra’s capital, covers about 348 km² on both Musi River banks, with a metro topping an estimated 2.7 million in 2025. It was capital of Buddhist Srivijaya, which dominated much of the western archipelago and the Malacca Strait’s trade lanes.
Palembang, capital of South Sumatra, covers 348.34 square kilometres astride the Musi River, in the low-lying east of southern Sumatra. The 2020 census counted 1,668,848 people and a mid-2025 estimate 1,829,745, making it Sumatra's second city after Medan and Indonesia's twelfth. The metropolitan area, which folds in districts of Banyuasin, Ogan Ilir and Ogan Komering Ilir regencies, exceeds 2.7 million.
The Buddhist kingdom of Srivijaya ruled much of the western archipelago from here and commanded sea lanes including the Strait of Malacca. The oldest local inscription, Kedukan Bukit, dated 682 AD, describes a king gaining magical powers and leading forces over land and water from the Tamvan delta to "Matajap", thought to be the Mukha Upang district; some scholars read it as Srivijaya's founding. After the Palembang Sultanate was abolished, the Dutch East Indies absorbed the city in 1825, and it received a charter on 1 April 1906.
Several origin stories compete. One derives the name from Malay limbang, making it a place for panning gold and diamond ore, supposedly ordered by an ancient ruler for security. Another uses lembang, giving "a place where water leaks" or constantly flooded ground, fitting its wetlands. A third tells of four brothers shipwrecked near the Musi under Majapahit whose makeshift rafts bobbed (limbang-limbang) ashore at a spot they called Palimbang. Chinese writes Jùgǎng, "giant port", borrowing a Hokkien sound for Kū-káng, "Old Port".
Palembang hosted the 2011 Southeast Asian Games and shared the 2018 Asian Games with Jakarta, and in July 2018 it opened Indonesia's first light rail line. It drew 2,011,417 tourists in 2017, 9,850 of them foreign, while struggling with traffic, floods, slums, pollution and peat fires. Neiva in Colombia lies at its antipode, the only antipodal pair where both cities exceed 300,000 people.
Source: Palembang
