Historical Tourism in Sukabumi City

Sukabumi city has not only beautiful and enchanted natural scenery, but it also has many historical places built since colonial era.

Some of those places is Selabintana, located 7 kilometres from Sukabumi. Visitors would find a hotel which is built by Dutch with the background of Mount Gede Pangrango. The hotel was built at 1900s by Dutchman and now it become an icon for selabintana area.

Tourism area of Lido lake is also developed at Dutch colonial era. It happened when Dutch colonial government built Bogor-Sukabumi highway in 1898. They found Lido lake area suitable as a rest place for engineers of the highway project and plantation owners.

Lido lake is a natural lake located at Cijeruk Valley and Cigombong. If you watch the lake from higher place, Lido lake is like a bowl at the foot of Mount Gede Pangrango. Near the lake, there is a waterfall called curug Cikaweni which flows from it a very cold water.

Lido lake area was opened for public in 1940 after Queen Wilhemina paid a visit rested at Lido. At that time, the first restaurant was officially opened as an added facility of the tourism area and also to serve the Queen.

Different with Lido, Situ Gunung lake is not a natural lake. The stories from local people and data from official of the area, it is known that the lake is an human-made.

As the story goes, in 1800s, the lake was made by a noble of Mataram kingdom Rangga Jagad Syahadana or Mbah Jalun (1770 - 1841). This prominent figure was a fugitive of colonial government, and he finally lived at the area of Banten islamic kingdom (called in Indonesian: Kasultanan), at the foot of Mount Gede Pangrango.

Mbah Jalun was very happy when his wife, originated from Kuningan - Cirebon area, gave him a son, Rangga Jaka Lulunta. His pride, happiness and thankfulness was implemented by creating Situ Gunung.

Situ Gunung lake then was taken over by Dutch and the Dutch was built some infrastructures there in 1850. One of them was a hotel called Hotel Situ Gunung.

Today, in Situ Gunung, there is a comfortable inn which has hot water facility. If you want to go camping, you can bring your tent or you can rent it here with reasonable price.