Gunongan

The Gunongan stands in central Banda Aceh, a white stucco structure of stepped and curved forms about ten metres high, built in the seventeenth century and traditionally credited to Sultan Iskandar Muda, when Aceh was the dominant power in the Strait. The account attached to it is that it was made for his consort, a princess from Pahang in the Malay peninsula, who was homesick for the hills of her country in flat Banda Aceh, so the sultan built her a mountain to climb - the levels and the crown are read as peaks. It functioned as part of a royal pleasure garden, the Taman Ghairah, of which little else survives. Nearby are the Kandang, a related walled enclosure, and the Pinto Khop gate. It survived the 2004 tsunami, which destroyed much of the city around it.

History

The Gunongan, once called Gegunungan Menara Permata, "gunungan of the jewelled tower", stood in a marble square in the Taman Ghairah, a walled royal pleasure garden. The 17th-century mystic ar-Raniri, who worked for several years for the sultan, described the garden in detail and credited it to Iskandar Thani in the mid-17th century, though the Gunongan itself may be older (Wikipedia, Gunongan Historical Park).

The main sights

• A stucco artificial mountain - stepped white forms about ten metres high.
• A royal garden remnant - the surviving piece of the Taman Ghairah.
• The homesick queen story - the Pahang princess the structure was built for.
• A tsunami survivor - standing where much of the city around it was destroyed.

When to go

All year; mornings before the heat. An hour.

Before you go

It is one small structure in a park - twenty minutes covers it. There is little interpretation on site. Aceh applies sharia law; dress modestly and note that alcohol is unavailable.

Nearby

The Baiturrahman grand mosque and the tsunami museum are a short walk.

Key facts