Jakarta

The site began as Sunda Kelapa, the port of the Hindu kingdom of Sunda at the mouth of the Ciliwung. In 1527 a force led by Fatahillah took the harbour and renamed it Jayakarta, a victory still marked as the city's founding on 22 June. In 1619 the Dutch East India Company destroyed the town and built Batavia in its place: a walled city of canals and gabled houses, laid out in the manner of Amsterdam, which became the administrative centre of the company's Asian empire and drew Chinese, Javanese, Bugis, Arab, Indian and European settlers.

The canals bred malaria and the old town became notorious for disease, so from the late 18th century the Dutch moved south to higher ground, laying out Weltevreden and later the garden suburb of Menteng. A massacre of the Chinese population in 1740 and the periodic epidemics are the darkest episodes of the colonial city. Batavia grew through the 19th century as the hub of a railway and plantation economy.

The Japanese occupation from 1942 renamed the city Jakarta, and independence was proclaimed here on 17 August 1945. Under Sukarno the capital acquired its monuments — the National Monument, the Istiqlal Mosque, wide avenues and stadiums — and under Suharto it spread outwards along toll roads and filled with towers, while kampung neighbourhoods were cleared. The riots of May 1998, in which Chinese Indonesians were targeted and more than a thousand people died, preceded Suharto's resignation. Jakarta remains the capital, while the government builds a new one, Nusantara, in East Kalimantan, and aims for it to be ready as national capital in 2028.

Jakarta's oldest local culture is Betawi, formed among the descendants of the many peoples brought together in colonial Batavia. Its markers are ondel-ondel, the tall paired puppet figures paraded at celebrations; lenong folk theatre; gambang kromong music, which mixes Chinese instruments with a Javanese ensemble; tanjidor brass bands; and the silat martial arts traditions of the outer districts. Betawi speech, an informal Malay, underlies the slang heard across Indonesian television and social media.

The city is also everyone's city: people from every province live here, and Sundanese, Javanese, Batak, Minangkabau, Chinese Indonesian and Ambonese communities keep their own churches, mosques, restaurants and associations. That mixture is visible in the calendar, which runs from Idul Fitri and Christmas to Chinese New Year and Nyepi, and in the way Indonesian rather than a regional language is the default in the street.

Jakarta drives national culture: the recording industry, television, publishing, film and advertising are based here, and its galleries, independent music venues and art spaces set trends for the country. Manners remain Indonesian — understated speech, deference to elders, a dislike of confrontation — even in a fast, hard-working city where status is displayed through cars, malls and address. Football is followed intensely, and badminton is the sport most people actually play.

About 11 million people live within the city's boundaries, and the wider metropolitan area, which takes in Bogor, Depok, Tangerang and Bekasi, holds more than 30 million, making it one of the largest urban regions in the world. Millions commute into the centre each day from the satellite cities, by commuter train, bus and motorcycle.

The economy is the country's largest concentration of finance, government, corporate headquarters, media and technology, alongside manufacturing on the outskirts and a vast informal sector of street traders, drivers and market workers. Wealth and poverty sit close together: gated compounds and towers stand beside kampung of narrow lanes, and much of the city's day-to-day work is done by people who travel a long way to reach it.

Days start early to beat the traffic, food is bought from carts and warungs that appear at fixed hours, and air-conditioned malls serve as public space in the heat. The city's structural problems are well known: land subsidence of several centimetres a year in the north caused mainly by groundwater extraction, floods in the wet season, congestion, and air pollution that regularly ranks among the worst in the region. A sea wall, new water supply schemes and the expansion of rail transport are the responses under way, alongside the construction of the new capital in Kalimantan.

Betawi cooking is the city's own. Soto Betawi is a beef soup enriched with coconut milk or milk, served with potato and crackers; nasi uduk is rice steamed in coconut milk with fried chicken, omelette and sambal; kerak telor, a spiced omelette of sticky rice, dried shrimp and grated coconut, is cooked over charcoal at fairs. Gado-gado, blanched vegetables with peanut sauce, and ketoprak, rice cake, tofu and noodles in the same dressing, are lunchtime standards, and asinan Betawi is a sharp pickled salad of vegetables or fruit.

Chinese influence runs deep. Glodok's lanes sell noodles, bakmi, rice porridge and roast meats, and dishes such as laksa Betawi and soto mie show the same mixing. Almost every regional cuisine of Indonesia is also represented: Padang restaurants with their stacked dishes of rendang and gulai are on every main road, Javanese warungs sell gudeg and pecel lele, and Manado, Batak and Makassar cooking have their own quarters.

Street food is the everyday habit, from martabak, a thick sweet pancake or a savoury stuffed pastry, to satay grilled on charcoal carts after dark. Es cendol and es campur, iced drinks with palm sugar, jelly and fruit, answer the heat. Jakarta is also the centre of Indonesia's modern coffee scene, with roasteries and cafés in the southern districts serving beans from Aceh, Toraja and Flores.