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.
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