HOUSE OF KOTAGEDE

A CULTURAL HERITAGE AND VILLAGE TOUR
www.housekotagede.com

Kotagede is one of famous places in Yogyakarta City. This place usually is famous for silver city . Nowadays, this place are famous for cultural heritage tour in Yogyakarta. Historically, Kotagede was the capital for the old Mataram Kingdom in 16 th century . It is the centre of culture and economy at that time. Although it is not the capital for the new Mataram Kingdom, we are still able to enjoy a lot of historical and wonderful places this time. For the example are the royal cemetery of The Old Mataram Kingdom with The First Mosque in that time in one site, Traditional Javanese House, Kembang Waru cakes factory, and the oldest traditional market in Yogyakarta named Pasar Legi. Those places will bring us to the past time.

The time when Moeslim came and try to attract the Hindhuism people to join them and how the Kotagede’s people live their life before. For now let us begin with the traditional market first. The traditional market that was built in 1578 named Pasar Legi is the most famous place for foreign visitors. It was the first market in the Old Mataram Kingdom Era.

Now, it is just an ordinary traditional market for the local citizens. However, most tourists said the place is wonderful. They could see uniques things that only can be found there. For example the bargaining process, local spices (like jahe, kunyit, kapulaga, and ect), Jamu, javanese tobaco, traditional foods, traditional kitchen utensils, and many more. Besides, they could have real experiences by direct interactions with local citizens there. The last but not least, this is the good place for taking a lot of Human Interest photos.

Another good place are Kembang Waru Cake Factory in Basen. Kembang Waru is a unique cake. It is looks like a lotus flower and is made by common inggridient like flours, eggs, maragarine, sugar, and yeast but, baked directly under the burning charcoal. Foreign tourists likes them because they taste sweet and light. This cake is not originally coming from Java. The Javanese people adapted it from the Dutch. In the past, this cake only served in the wedding ceremony. Nowadays, we can have it as a snack together with coffe or tea in the morning. But, these are not all. Kotagede still has the cultural heritage building from the Old Mataram Kingdom era.

Kotagede has The royal cemetery sites with the royal mosque (the oldest mosque in Yogyakarta) and also the traditional javanese house like The Joglo houses, The Limasan Houses, and The Kalang Houses For the cultural heritage building. Foreign tourists will see a lot of arts in old Javanese buildings. The style itself is unique. It is combination from Javanese-Hindhuism and Moeslim style. Most of those Javanese houses are owned by a person. Fortunately, there is a living museum named the House of UGM. It is an original javanese traditional house (Joglo) owned by a university in Yogyakarta. We can enter it and learn all of the thing that we need from the traditional houses. We can visit these houses after we visit the Royal Cemetery site.

alternative tour in yogyakartaWe will see a combination between the javanese-hindhuism style and the moeslim style architecture in The Royal cemetery site. It is a place for The Royal Mosque and The Royal Cemetery and surounded by the Hindhuism gates. It was the core of the Old Mataram Kingdom. While in the cemetery, we could visit the cemetery of The Old Kingdom family members after we change our clothes into the tradtional Javanese dress. In this place we will not only learn the historical things but also the phylosopical things about the buildings, the Javanese dress, and the pilgrimage.

Kotagede is a potential tourist destination. There are a lot of Cultural Heritage and tourists attraction that visitors could enjoy. They will like to have photos here. We are sure that walking around Kotagede could make our visitors feel fun and learn a lot of things about our culture.