It is such a beautiful building, but it has so much potential to be better inside.
It does have a good history of Indonesia and the settlement of Jakarta, which is truly interesting. I would say it is worth a visit, make sure you bring water as the place is not air conditioned and it gets hot inside.
We were very excited to visit the National Museum. The old building with ancient stone objects and statues was interesting and amazing. However, the new building was quite boring and lack of information. Staff was unfriendly and a bit rude. Such a disappointment!
The Museum is one of the oldest museums in Indonesia, that's what our guide John from Holiday Jakarta Tour said. Pretty good displaying and thousands collection but unfortunately some part of museum is closed due to renovation. Overall it's a good way to get to know about Indonesia in short.
Museum Gajah or National Museum now is called has a deep history back to the year 1862 since it was opened to public. It was called museum gajah because there was a gajah (elephant) statue given from Thailand King, King Chulalongkorn (Rama V) wom visited to Museum in 1871.
National Museum has rejuvenated to modern facilities, renovated the building to fulfill the modern citizen now. National museum is storing 160,000 historical items which consists from 7 prehistory collections, from archeolog classic/hindu-buddha; Numismatic and heraldik; ceramic; Etnographic, geographic and history.
Magnificent collections in National Museum, and hoping the museum will ad more collections in the future
I have mixed feeling for this museum. I always interested in history and culture. Hence every time i travel to new place, i always look for for their museum. What's the best way to learn about the country and their people culture other that to visit their history isn't it? The good things is, its strategic location (right next/across to MONAS), the friendly staffs, cheap entrance and the aircond (to run from Jakarta 'hotness'). But the lack is, how they organize the artifact and the history itself. It's look all mess up. You'll see things that not supposed to be at the section. For example, you will suddenly see a Hindu-Buddha statue at 3rd floor when it supposed to be at the old building with all others statue. And some of the artifacts don't even have a description on it. Make you wonder, is that an artifact and or just a decoration. And lastly. Usually, for museum, they will organize all the artifact and information based on the timeline. but it's not that case for this museum. It's kinda disappointing since does have an interesting history and this museum have a lots of items that can tell the story better. Hopefully, they do something to improve the visitor experience instead of just filling all the empty space with whatever statue that suppose to belong with it's friends.
