Description of the attraction
The National Museum of Indonesia is located in Central Jakarta, at Merdeka Square. In the National Museum of Indonesia, you can see archaeological, historical, ethnological collections, as well as learn many interesting facts about Indonesian geography.
The building of the museum is also called the "House of the Elephant" due to the fact that a bronze statue of an elephant is installed in front of the entrance to the museum. This statue was donated by Chulalongkorn, King of Siam, in 1871. In addition, it is also called the "House of Sculptures", because the museum has a large collection of statues from different eras.
The widest collection of the museum includes many artifacts brought from all over Indonesia. The history of the museum begins in 1778, when a group of Dutch people formed the Royal Society of Arts and Science of Batavia. This institute was a private organization whose purpose was to stimulate research in the field of visual arts and natural sciences, especially in the fields of history, archeology, ethnography and physics, as well as the publication of the findings.
One of the organizers of this institute, the Dutch botanist Jacob Radermacher, donated to the organization a building and a collection of cultural objects and books, which were of great value, and from which the museum and library began. The collection gradually increased, and new buildings were built at the beginning of the 19th century.
In 1862, the government of the Dutch East Indies decided to build a new museum. The museum officially opened in 1868. In 1931, the museum's collection was exhibited at the World Cultural Exhibition in Paris. However, a fire broke out at the exhibition, and the Dutch East Indies pavilion was destroyed, like most of the exhibits. The museum received compensation and for several years bought exhibits in order to replenish the collection. In 2007, a new museum building was opened, which houses artifacts from prehistoric times to the present day.
The National Museum has a rich collection and is considered one of the finest in Indonesia and South Asia. The museum's collection includes about 62,000 artifacts, including anthropological exhibits, and 5,000 archaeological artifacts from all over Indonesia and Asia.
The museum is divided into two parts: the old wing - the Elephant House and the new wing - the House of Statues. In the Elephant House, you can see a collection of Indo-Buddhist stone statues, as well as sculptures from ancient Indonesia. The Elephant House has a treasury that contains an archaeological and ethnographic collection, a hall with a collection of historical relics and ceramics, textiles and coins. The new museum building, the House of Statues, has seven floors. Four of them have a permanent exhibition, and the other three are the museum's administration. One of the largest exhibits of the museum is the statue of Buddha, whose height reaches 4 meters.
