Historical Buildings in Siak Sri Indrapura

I spent my childhood in Siak Sri Indrapura, a small town in Riau, Sumatra Island. You can reach this city by car or ship from Pekanbaru. It takes approximately 3 hours using car and about 2 hours using speedboat. There is something like a very large green preview around the way to Siak. Hehee..Why? because there is almost filled by the palm tree everywhere, in the left and right side.You also can get the additional view when using speedboat. People doing some activities at the edge of the river, like children bathing, woman washing clothes or bathing, and many thing else. In this post, i will tell the historical buildings in Siak.

Siak is also known as "The palace city", because there is a palace that situated in the middle of Siak Sri Indrapura city. This palace is named Asserayah Al Hasyimiah. It is the historical evidence of the Sultanate of Siak. It was built on Sultan Syarif Hasyim Abdul Jalil Syaifudin's governance in 1889 by German architect. The architecture of the palace is the combination among the architecture of Malays, Arab, and Europeans.

Siak Palace (taken from pb.ponriau2012.com)

The palace store collection of properties of the Kingdom. There are kingdom umbrella, Comets, gold plated royal throne, a duplicate royal crown, etc. The original gold crown has been brought to the National Museum in Jakarta. Comets is a large German music player which has a disc contains classic songs from Mozart and Bethoven. There are only two comets in this world, in German and Siak.

Comet (taken from www.riaudailyphoto.com)

There are also variety of desk chairs from woods, crystal, and glass , various form of cupboards and weapon from iron and copper inside the palace. Another interesting thing in this palace is the golden red stair to the second floor.

stair to second floor

Beside that, we may see the Siak Bridge when enter the town. This bridge is named Tengku Agung Sultanah Latifah. This bridge is extended on Siak river, knownly as the deepest river in Indonesia. The unique part of this bridge is on top of this pier there is a restaurant. But, until now, it is not already.

Siak Bridge (taken from www.sungaikuantan.com)

The other building is Balai Kerapatan Tinggi. It is used as a place of high-ranking royal deliberation and as a place to decide the matter of justice that occured in those times. This Balai is situated on the edge of Siak River. There is a former prison that used as the place languished after sentenced prisoners on the ground floor.

Balai Kerapatan Tinggi (taken from www.indonesiabox.com)

There are still many historic places in Siak that we can find here. But, unfortunately, many of them are not maintained by government or other related part.