Idle Cipanas villa makes comeback
Idle Cipanas villa makes comeback
Theresia Sufa, The Jakarta Post, Bogor
Out of sight from the lines of cars heading to Puncak, the
historic Cipanas presidential retreat returned briefly to the
spotlight on June 5 when President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono used
it as the venue to honor environmentalists.
Cipanas villa, which was a favorite retreat for founding
president Sukarno and his family, is part of a 26-hectare forest
that has been named a conservation area.
Located at the foot of Mount Gede in Cipanas, West Java, some
103 kilometers south of Jakarta, the villa was built in 1740
during the Dutch colonial era.
The name Cipanas means springwater in Sundanese and comes from
the sulfur spring located on the ground's of the villa.
However, the former peace and beauty of the presidential
retreat has been disturbed by the traditional market located just
50 meters away, with street vendors and piles of garbage
encroaching all the way up to the gates of the villa.
"The villa is a local asset. I do not know what the Cianjur
regent is doing to resolve this chronic traffic congestion ...
the administration could move the market," said Titin, a resident
of Cipanas subdistrict, Pacet district.
Two major events in the country's history occurred at the
presidential retreat.
The first was on Dec. 13, 1965, when Sukarno depreciated the
rupiah from Rp 1,000 to Rp 1.
The second was when Indonesia hosted a three-day summit
between the Philippine government and the insurgent Moro National
Liberation Front from March 14, 1993. The mediator of the talks
was the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
During his rule, Sukarno built a pavilion on the grounds of
the villa where he wrote his official speeches. The pavilion,
designed by architects RM Sudarsono and F. Silaban -- the latter
the architect behind the Grand Mosque in Central Jakarta -- has
stone walls, from which it derived its name Gedung Bentol (bumpy
building).
Besides the main building and Gedung Bentol, the complex has
five other pavilions, each named after one of the five Pandawa
Lima brothers in the Mahabharata epic: Yudistira, Bima, Arjuna
and the twins Nakula and Sadewa.
Despite its history the villa has been largely idle in recent
years, except for a newly built tennis court that is sometimes
used by politicians on weekends.
The director of the Cibodas Botanical Gardens, Holif Imamudin,
said the local administration should help improve the beauty of
the area by replacing a soccer field located across from the
palace with a small forest.
"The villa is a symbol of the country. There should be a way
to solve the traffic problems around here," he said.