Museum Taman Prasasti: The Oldest Memorial Park is in Jakarta

As the capital city of Indonesia, Jakarta has a lot of beautiful attractions like parks and museums to discover. I spent almost three times in a month only to explore Jakarta lately. What I really like most of this city is the historical stories behind each of the places that I visited. On March 11, I went to Jakarta to explore a museum located next to the National Monument called Museum Taman Prasasti or in English called Museum of Memorial Stone Park.

I found out the information about this museum from some articles that read on Google. I read a brief description of this museum and then decided to go there from Bekasi train station. To go to this museum, you only need to buy a commuter line ticket to Juanda station, and it took less than an hour to reach Juanda from Bekasi.

After I took off from the commuter at Juanda station, I checked out my phone to find to which direction I should go. I use Waze most of the time, even I rarely use motorbike or car while exploring places because. Waze provides me the most accurate road and street (in my opinion).

You can take an Uber or Gojek, or you just can walk since it is less than 2 KM away from Juanda Station. If you decided to go there by walking, the fastest route is not to enter the National Monument area. You can walk on the pedestrian outside the National Monument park.

It took less than 20 minutes to reach the museum. The museum itself is located behind those skyscrapers building. If you are feeling hungry, you can stop by a local restaurant less than 50 meters before the main street to the museum. There is also a café and a bakery shop next to the local restaurant if I am not mistaken.

Moving on, to enter the museum you have to buy a ticket which only IDR 5,000/person. I am sorry that I forgot the open hours, but the museum closes at 15.00 (I remember because I reached the museum on 14.45, LOL).

If you are scared of ghost stories, mythical statues, or that kind of thing atmosphere, I would not recommend you to come to this place. Well, I visited this place by myself and did pretty well (liar). The ambiance of this Museum seems really really creepy since this museum is formerly a cemetery. Yes. A cemetery. Do I have to spell it to you?

On 1795, this area is used by the dutch to bury noble Dutchmen. Because this used-to-be cemetery park is open since 1795, Museum Prasasti is claimed as the oldest modern memorial park compared to Fort Canning Park (1926), Gore Hill Cemetery (1868) in Sydney, Mount Auburn in Massachusetts (1831), and Père Lachaise Cemetery (1803) in Paris. However, this park is not as big as it used to be. Due to the development around this area, in 1975 the park that used to be around 5ha total area reduced into 1.3ha. That is kind of pissed me off because I really like this place. I mean, this place can be one of the historical places in Jakarta that we can proud of, right? This is the oldest cemetery park compared to some other big cities!

This place, Kebon Jahe cemetery, long ago is used to accommodate the corpses from The New Dutch Church (now is Museum Wayang). Probably you are wondering why Museum Prasasti used to have a really huge area that covered up to 5ha? The used-to-be cemetery area was used to bury people who died because of an outbreak of the disease in Batavia. You can imagine how many tombstones and corpses were moved and transferred to different places in Jakarta, even some of them were moved to the origin country. The remainings are only around 900 - 1300 tombstones and sculptures out of 4200 that used to be here. These 900 things are the only replica, so there are no longer corpses or bones in this park.

It is also said that when they moved the corpses and tombstones from Museum Wayang, the used the creek near the cemetery area… sounds creepy.

Well, that was all my experience exploring this place all alone and seeing it by myself one of the best historical places in Jakarta. I am so happy that I have been to this place. I hope that the government will concern to develop and maintain a place like this and other heritage places in Jakarta.

If you are planning to visit this museum, just a reminder please come in at 14.45 by the latest. Why it is only 15 minutes away before the closing time? Because I know that you will not feel comfortable to hang around at this place for hours!

Thank you for reading! Please share if you like this post or give comments about your opinion.
Have a nice day!

Sources: 1. Article from Kompas.com
2. Another article from Kompas.com
3. Article from Liputan6.com
4. Signboards