History of Maritime Museum (Museum Bahari)

The building of Maritime Museum was formerly a spicy warehouse of Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC). VOC was Holland’s company taking care of trading activities on both land and sea, for the interest of Holland Kingdom.

In 1893, VOC constructed a tower at the edge of Jakarta Gulf Beach. The tower that is known as Syahbandar Tower is 300 meters away from the spicy warehouse. There’re two other buildings built facing the tower. The aim of constructing the warehouse, two buildings and tower were to facilitate VOC on watching and controlling boats and ships traffic, as well as to facilitate the administration of spicy trading to Europe.

In 1942, Japan occupied Indonesia and changed the function of spicy warehouse to become logistic warehouse of military equipments. After the freedom of Indonesia in 1945, the former spicy warehouse used as logistic warehouse of PTT and PLN.

In 1976 the warehouse was renovated. On 7th July, 1977 the building was officially announced as Maritime Museum by governor of DKI Jakarta at that time, Ali Sadikin. Read more...