National Museum of Indonesia

The National Museum of Indonesia, popularly called the Elephant Building for the bronze elephant gifted by King Chulalongkorn of Siam in 1871, is the country's oldest and largest museum. Founded by a colonial scholarly society in 1778, it holds vast collections of prehistoric artefacts, Hindu-Buddhist statuary, ceramics, textiles and ethnographic objects from across the archipelago. A treasury room displays gold jewellery and royal regalia. It sits on the west side of Merdeka Square and remains central to understanding Indonesian history.