About Bandung

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Bandung is the capital city of West Java in Indonesia. The city is located about 180 km southeast of Jakarta. Although it has a population of over two million, this city is considered more slow-paced than Jakarta. Bandung is situated at an altitude of 768 meters above sea level.

Due to its topology, the climate in Bandung is relatively cooler throughout the year than most Indonesian cities. The average temperature is 22.6°C, also lower than most Indonesian cities. The average annual rainfall ranges from 1,000 millimeters in the middle and the southeast region to 3,500 millimeters in the north region of the city. The rainy season is similar to that of other Indonesian cities, starting around November and ends in April.

Surrounded by green fertile mountains, Bandung today is Indonesia’s center for learning and creativity. Bandung is one of the most prestigious student cities in Indonesia. Bandung is also the center of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) development, at the same time it is a center for the arts. Every weekend and long holidays, the city is filled with young people from Jakarta who flock to Bandung to enjoy a youthful and creative atmosphere in the form of this city's music, painting, fashion, and culinary arts.

Originally established in the late 19th century as a colonial garrison town, Bandung soon grew into a town for wealthy planters who owned the miles and miles of tea, coffee, cinchona plantations, fruit orchards, and vegetable gardens in the cool and fertile hills of West Java. Bandung thus became the town of the European elite. And since this was the era of art deco, Bandung has a rich heritage of buildings in exemplary art deco architecture. That includes the beautiful Villa Isola (now used as Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia building), the Societeit Concordia building (now Gedung Merdeka), the Clubhouse of Societeit Concordia (now used as Museum of The Asian African Conference building), the main Braga shopping center where the Dutch colonial elite went shopping, and the Savoy-Homann and Preanger hotels where they would overnight and hold grand balls.

Along with the present Jalan Juanda, then known as Dago Boulevard, were the houses of the elite with their green lawns and flower gardens fronting posh houses. In those colonial heydays in the early 20th century, Bandung became known as Parijs van Java or the Paris of Java, where Dutch planters and their wives paraded and flaunted their wealth and beauty along the boulevards and Braga Weg, which was known as the Champs-Élysées of the East.

Today, Bandung is remembered in history internationally as the venue of the first large-scale Asian-African Conference held in 1955 which brought together leaders of 29 Asian and African countries to declare a joint fight against colonialism for national independence. Attending the Conference were noted national leaders, among them were Jawaharlal Nehru and his daughter Indira Gandhi of India, Chao En Lai of China, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia, and Soekarno as the first President of Indonesia. The Asian-African Conference later became the precursor of the Non-Aligned Movement.