Fort Roterdam Sulawesi

Fort Rotterdam was built in 1545 by King Gowa X with name “Benteng Ujung Pandang”. Inside this fortress there is a “rumah panggung” or stilts house of Gowa, where the King and his family lives. The time when the Dutch ruled Banda and Maluku, they decided to conquer Gowa Kingdom so the VOC’s trading fleets could easily enter Sulawesi. In their effort to take Gowa, Dutch hired some mercenaries from Maluku. During more than a year, this fortress was battered and then finally the Dutch successfully destroyed the King’s fortress. They forced Sultan Hasanuddin to sign Bongaya agreement in 1667, which one of its clauses was to give Benteng Ujung Pandang to the Dutch.

After it was taken by the Dutch, this fortress was rebuilt and redesigned based on Dutch’s architect, and then the name was also changed into Fort Rotterdam. This fortress was used as the central government of the Dutch colony in East Indonesia. In the era of Japan colonialism, this fortress was used as the central of language and farming study and then when Indonesia won their independence, TNI or Indonesian Army used it as the central command.

Now, in this big fortress there is still a church left by the Dutch and La Galigo Museum which saves more than 4 thousand collections of numismatic, foreign ceramics, history books, scripts, and ethnography. The ethnography collection consists of different kind of technology, art, tools, and other things which were used by Bugis, Makassar, Mandar, and Toraja ethnics. Nowadays, besides functioned as a tourist attraction, this fortress is also used as the cultural center of South Sulawesi. Much of the Fort Rotterdam fortress has undergone renovation work, although some areas remain quite untouched and are beginning to crumble away somewhat. Interestingly, Fort Rotterdam was actually constructed on the site of a 16th-century Gowanese fort, which was unsuccessful in keeping out the Dutch invaders and was soon destroyed.

Address: Jalan Pasar Ikan, Makassar, Sulawesi, Indonesia, ID.