Magelang

Magelang – Launch Pad to Borobudur

The most striking visual element one is bound to immediately notice about the city of Magelang in Central Java is just how many mountains you can see surrounding the area. The city is already rather high up in terms of elevation, at about an average of 354 meters above sea level. And yet this 18.56 square kilometer city is still surrounded by multiple mountains, including Mt. Merbabu and Mt. Sumbing that its 122,150 residents can see from the highest vantage point of the nearby Ketep Pass.

The city is best known nationwide as being the gateway to the world-famous UNESCO World Heritage site of Borobudur Temple, a 9^th-century Buddhist monument decorated with over 2,700 relief panels and the largest of its kind in the world. The temple is a popular Buddhist pilgrim destination and remains Indonesia's most visited tourist monument to this day.

Beyond the Borobudur Temple, Magelang has plenty more to offer. The OHD Museum allows visitors to see the private art collection of Oei Hong Djien, with over 2,000 works of art gathered here. Diponegoro Museum is available for those who are more interested in local history than art, and allows visitors to learn more about its eponymous national prince and hero. The city's mountainous surroundings also gives it plenty of white water rafting river tracks that span nearly 13 kilometers, as well as water falls like Kedung Kayang and Sekarlangit. The aforementioned Ketep Pass provides a volcano observation point and a volcanology museum.

This city has done reasonably well for itself in the past few years. It managed to overcome pandemic hurdles with growth of 3.20 percent, 5.77 percent and 5.45 percent from 2021 to 2023. Its Gross Regional Domestic Product (GRDP) at current prices in 2023 was Rp 10. 98 trillion, with its biggest contributing industries being manufacturing (at Rp 1.80 trillion or 16.49 percent), construction (at Rp 1.79 trillion or 16.34 percent) and wholesale and retail trade (at Rp 1.54 trillion or 14.07 percent).