iSee Kantor Pos Besar

Palace, school and post office

This brightly coloured building has an equally colourful history:

• When in 1830 the Dutch displaced the Surabaya royal families from their original alun alun (see # 1) this was the place where they built their new residences were built. The name of the street Jl. Kebonrojo still reminds us of this.
• When the royals moved to higher grounds in 1880, the buildings were put to use as the city’s first college for Europeans and the local elite: the HBS (Hogere Burger School Soerabaia). Soekarno, Indonesia’s first president went to school here from 1916 to 1923.
• When the HBS had outgrown its premises, they briefly served as headquarters of Soerabaja Police Commissary (Markas Hoofdcommissariaat van Politie) before being demolished in 1926
• It was G.J.P.M. Bolsius who designed the current building: Surabaya’s Main Post Office, which it still is today. The high ceilings and a large hall with vertical blinds make this a very comfortable place any time of the day in the country’s hot climate. In fact, the post office staff uses the hall to play badminton after office hours.

Movie set

This building is a popular location for movie clips and photography thanks to the spectacular ceiling, massive roof planks and big arched windows that beautifully filter the sunlight.