Gondang Baru Museum

Since the Dutch Colonial ruler era in Indonesia, Surakarta region is a sugar cane producer. Here you can find several sugar cane factories; they are the Gondang Baru in Klaten, Colomadu and Tasikmadu in Karanganyar. If you want to trace back to the history of sugar cane industry in Central Java, you can visit the sugar cane museum locating at the Gondang Baru sugar cane factory, at the main road connecting Prambanan – Klaten town. The museum was officially opened to the public on August 22, 1986 coinciding with the 19th international society of sugar cane technologist congress in Pasuruan, East Java.

Today, the museum becomes a historical center of the sugar industry, an object to study about sugar industry as well as a tourist attraction. The sugar museum has collections of traditional farm implements, office equipments, picture of sugar factory buildings, laboratory equipments, old locomotives, etc.

The collections are a reminiscing of the sugar industry of the past, when it was still a home industry, until the present condition. This museum tries to preserve and display memories of the past, and will be developed to become a National Sugar Museum in the future.

The Gondang Baru sugar factory, formerly known as Gondangwinangoen Sugar Factory, is an inseparable part of the Central Java Sugar Museum. The factory has built in 1860, and used a water turbine for the main power. In 1884, it was modernized with a “LAHAY & BRISSONEUEF” steam engine, and later on, was further modernized with new machineries step by step. Other interesting tourist attractions in Gondang Baru Sugar Cane Museum are among others an old steam locomotive made in 1889 “DANIEL & RUEB”, from Breda, the Netherlands, called “SIMBAH”. It also still has five old steam locomotives which are still actively in operation. Two of them are known as ‘LINKE HOFMANWERKE”, from Breslau Germany. Steam locomotive enthusiasts from the United States, the UK and other Europe countries and Japan appreciate the collection very much. There are many old machineries made a century ago that still in good condition and still working productively. So we can say that Gondang Baru Sugar Factory is a Living Museum that still held out and continually producing Sugar.