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Located in the north of the city, the quaint old district of Batavia used to serve as the administrative centre of the great Dutch trading empire, stretching from South Africa all the way to Japan. Plenty of buses head north from Thamrin to Kota, including #P1, #P11 and air-con #P17. All these buses drive north along Jalan Gajah Mada past the impressive facade of Kota train station , a good place to begin your tour. Head north from Kota station along Jalan Lada, past the Politeknik Swadharma, and enter the boundaries of what was once the walled city of Batavia. The centre of Batavia, Taman Fatahillah , lies 300m to the north of the train station, an attractive cobbled square hemmed in on all four sides by museums and historical monuments. On the south side is the largely disappointing Jakarta History Museum (Tues-Thurs & Sun 9am-3pm, Fri 9am-2pm, Sat 9am-1pm; Rp1500), which sets out to describe (in Indonesian only) the history of the city from the Stone Age to the present day, but unfortunately only really gets as far as the seventeenth century. Upstairs is more interesting, with many of the rooms furnished as they would have been two hundred years ago. The more entertaining Wayang Museum (Tues-Thurs & Sun 9am-3pm, Fri 9am-2.30pm, Sat 9am-12.30pm; Rp1500), to the west of the square, is dedicated to the Javanese art of puppetry and housed in one of the oldest buildings in the city. Exhibits display puppets from right across the archipelago, and every Sunday between 10am and 2pm some of them perform in a free wayang show . Continuing clockwise around the square, next to Cafe Batavia you'll come to the ornate Cannon Si Jagur , built by the Portuguese to defend the city of Melaka. On the side is the Latin inscription Ex me ipsa renata sum - "Out of myself I was reborn" - and the whole thing is emblazoned with sexual imagery, from the clenched fist (a suggestive gesture in Southeast Asia) to the barrel itself, a potent phallic symbol in Indonesia. To the east of the square, the Balai Seni Rupa (Tues-Thurs & Sun 9am-3pm, Fri 9am-2pm, Sat 9am-1pm; Rp1500), Jakarta's fine arts museum, and accompanying Ceramics Museum house some works by Indonesia's most illustrious artists, including portraits by Affandi and sketches of the capital by Raden Saleh.
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