Banda Aceh Tsunami Museum

The Indian Ocean tsunami of 26 December 2004 killed on the order of a hundred and seventy thousand people in Aceh, most of them in and around Banda Aceh, and the museum opened in 2009 to record it. The building, by Ridwan Kamil, is designed to be read: the exterior is patterned after the woven forms of the Aceh saman dance, the plan is meant to suggest a wave, the upper floors are built as an evacuation refuge with an escape hill, and the entrance takes visitors through the Space of Sorrow, a narrow dark corridor with water running down high walls and the sound of it around you, before opening into the exhibition. Inside are photographs, salvaged objects, a chamber of the names of the dead lit from above, and the accounts of survivors. It is a hard visit.

What you actually see

• A dark flooded entrance corridor - the Space of Sorrow, walked before anything else.
• A chamber of names - the dead listed on walls lit from above.
• Survivor accounts and objects - photographs and salvage from the city.
• A building designed as a refuge - escape floors and a hill for the next one.

When to go

All year; 26 December is the commemoration. Two hours.

Honest expectations

It is genuinely distressing and the entrance corridor affects people badly - it is meant to. Displays are largely in Indonesian. Aceh applies sharia law; dress modestly.

Nearby

The Baiturrahman mosque and the beached generator ship PLTD Apung are close.