National Press Museum, Surakarta

  

National Press Musem

 

It was the first time I visited Press Museum but I had passed it several times. My curiosity led me to visit this place while I was accompanying my younger brother who had a try out for university entrance. Lucky me, I had a motorcycle with me so I could go anywhere around Surakarta.

It was Sunday and I was a little afraid that the museum was closed. Unfortunately, it opened. The security welcomed me kindly. He asked me to park my motorcycle next to his office and showed me the way to enter the building. It is free.

 

Front door

Press Museum building has unique architecture. It is located right at the corner of a crossroad. There are two big newspapers place. Everybody who passes the road may read the newspaper. That’s for public. In from of the building, there are dragon statues. They are awesome. When you go inside at the main building, you will see some statues of press pioneers in Indonesia. You can also see some old or we could say very old newspapers and magazines displayed in a glass table. Even the papers are getting brown. 

 

The statues

 

Very old magazines 

 

 

 Very old magazines and newspapers

Besides the statues, old magazines and newspapers, there is an old machine. It is a historical machine since it helps Gusti Nurul, the Princess of Surakarta Palace, to dance in Netherland. The story is Gusti Nurul was invited to perform Javanese dance in Netherland Kingdom but it was impossible to bring all the gamelan with her. So, the machine was used to send the sound of gamelan which is played in Indonesia to Netherland. That’s cool.

  

The Machine

Next, I visited multimedia room. It is a room with internet connection. Unfortunately, some of the computers are out of order. Next room is library. It is in the second floor. The place is nice equipped with air conditioner. The collections are books in general. Then I went to the next room, it is a digital room. Some computers are provided with digital archives. Digital archives mean very old magazines and newspapers are scanned and saved in the computer. Almost all of them are in forms of pdf and jpg.

 Multimedia room

 

Library

 Digital room

Digitalized

 

One of old ads

I went upstairs accompanied by an officer. She showed me a room with many collections of new newspapers and magazines. The amazing one is that those newspapers and magazines come from all over Indonesia. The newspapers and magazines publisher send their product regularly. That’s awesome. You visit one place but you can get the news from all over Indonesia. 

  

All around Indonesia

 

It's here, in Surakarta