The Fatahillah and old City Jakarta - HD stock video

The Jakarta History Museum (also known as Fatahillah Museum) is housed in the former City Hall located in the old part of the city now known as Jakarta Kota, some hundred meters behind the port and warehouses of Sunda Kelapa. Originally called the Stadhuis, this building was the administrative headquarters of the Dutch East India Company, and later of the Dutch Government. Built in 1710 by Governor General van Riebeeck, this solid building hides below it notorious dungeons and filthy water prisons. Most risoners, both Dutch rebels and Indonesian ?natives? were publicly flogged, barbarically impaled and executed on the square called the Stadhuisplein--now known as Fatihillah Square--while the Dutch overlords looked down superciliously on the proceedings below from the portico and windows above. Indonesia?s freedom fighter Javanese Prince Diponegoro, who was treacherously arrested, was imprisoned here in 1830 before being banished to Manado in North Sulawesi. Another freedom fighter earlier imprisond here around 1670 was Untung Suropati from East Java. In the center of the square is a fountain which served as water supply for the colonial capital, Batavia, while to its north is a Portuguese cannon, believed to be a font of fertility. Today, the Jakarta History Museum displays the history of Jakarta from prehistoric days to the founding of the town of Jayakarta in1527 by Prince Fatahillah of Banten, and through Dutch colonization from the 16th. century onwards until Indonesia?s Independence in 1945.