Semarang Old Town

I first went to Kota Lama in 2011. I was backpacking through Java, had three weeks, no fixed itinerary. Most travelers skip Semarang. They go straight from Yogyakarta to Surabaya or up to the Dieng Plateau. I almost did too.

A guy at my hostel in Yogya told me to stop there. He was Dutch, had been living in Indonesia for eight years. He said Kota Lama had the best colonial architecture in Java. Better than Jakarta's Kota Tua. Better than anything in Surabaya. I changed my bus ticket.

I got to Semarang at 6 in the morning. Took a becak to Kota Lama. The driver charged me 25,000 rupiah, probably double what a local would pay. I didn't care.

The old town was empty at that hour. Just me and a few food vendors setting up their carts. I walked around for three hours before I saw another tourist.

I took 200 photos that morning. One building had a tree growing through its second floor, branches coming out where windows used to be. The roots had cracked the foundation. The building was still standing. Barely.

Semarang was one of the most important ports on Java's north coast. The Dutch East India Company operated there from the 1600s. The old town was their commercial center. Banks, trading houses, customs offices, all concentrated in about 31 hectares.

The area flooded constantly. Still does. The land has been sinking for decades. Subsidence, they call it. Groundwater extraction. The northern part of Semarang drops about 15 centimeters a year in some places. Kota Lama sits at the lowest point.

I went back in 2015. Same hostel guy, different trip. He told me the government had started restoration work. I wanted to see it.

The main square, Taman Srigunting, had been cleaned up. New pavement. Benches. The Blenduk Church across from it had fresh white paint. A few cafes had opened. Young people sitting around taking photos.

The Spiegel building was under scaffolding. So was the old Javasche Bank. Workers everywhere. Signs about EU funding, UNESCO, heritage preservation.

By 2018, Kota Lama had become a destination. Instagram had discovered it. The old warehouses with their crumbling walls became backdrops. Couples posing in front of rusted doors. Influencers with ring lights at 2 in the afternoon.

I went back that year. The main streets were crowded. Weekends especially. Families, tour groups, university students on field trips. A guy was selling rides on a vintage bicycle, 10,000 rupiah for 15 minutes.

The Marba building had been turned into a 3D trick art museum. 75,000 rupiah entry fee. I went in. It was full of painted walls where you could pose like you were falling off a cliff or being eaten by a shark. Had nothing to do with the building's history.

Restaurants had taken over several of the old warehouses. One called Spiegel had tables where cargo used to be stored. The food was fine. 85,000 rupiah for nasi goreng. About four times what you'd pay outside the old town.

I talked to a local guide in 2019. A guy named Pak Hendro who'd been giving tours of Kota Lama for 12 years. He charged 150,000 rupiah for two hours. Worth it.

He told me there were originally around 50 heritage buildings in the old town. By his count, about 25 had been properly restored. The others were in various states of collapse. Some were privately owned. The owners couldn't afford restoration. Couldn't sell either, because heritage designation meant restrictions on what buyers could do with the buildings.

The government offered some subsidies. Pak Hendro said the application process took 18 months minimum. Most owners gave up.

In 2020, before the pandemic, I read that Kota Lama had a major flood. The Semarang city government had been working on a polder system. Basically a series of pumps and retention ponds to manage the water. The project cost around 300 billion rupiah. Foreign funding from the Netherlands, which made sense given the history.

The polder helped. Pak Hendro messaged me in 2021, told me the flooding had decreased significantly. Streets that used to be underwater for weeks now drained within hours.

I went back in 2023. The difference was visible. Buildings that had water stains two meters up their walls now had dry ground floors. Some owners had finally started renovating. A few new shops had opened at street level.

But the subsidence continues. The land is still sinking. The pumps are managing the symptoms, not the cause.

The main tourist area is maybe six or seven blocks. Gereja Blenduk at the center. The old post office, now a restaurant. The Marba building with its 3D museum. A few cafes, a few souvenir shops.

On weekends you can't walk without bumping into someone's photo shoot. Pre-wedding photography is huge there. Brides in white dresses standing in front of century-old warehouses. I counted 11 couples on a single Saturday afternoon in 2023.

Outside those six blocks, Kota Lama is still mostly empty buildings. Still mostly decay. I walked 15 minutes from the main square and found a row of warehouses with collapsed roofs. No tourists. No renovation. Just pigeons and weeds.

A real estate agent in Semarang told me property values in the restored part of Kota Lama had increased about 400% since 2010. In the unreconstructed parts, prices were flat. Nobody wanted to buy a building they'd have to spend a billion rupiah to fix.