Makassar

The city grew from the twin kingdom of Gowa and Tallo, whose port at the mouth of the Jeneberang River became one of the great trading centres of the archipelago in the 16th century. Its rulers adopted Islam in the first years of the 1600s and kept the harbour open to everyone — Malays, Chinese, Portuguese, English, Danish and Indian merchants all traded here, and Makassar became the main outlet for spices from Maluku beyond Dutch control, a policy the sultans defended by arguing that God had made the sea free to all.

That brought war with the Dutch East India Company, which allied with the Bugis prince Arung Palakka of Bone. Sultan Hasanuddin was defeated, and the Treaty of Bongaya in 1667 forced Gowa to cede its fort, which the Dutch rebuilt as Fort Rotterdam; the great stronghold of Somba Opu fell two years later. Under colonial rule Makassar remained a busy port, and Makassan trepang fishers sailed as far as the coasts of northern Australia, where they traded with Aboriginal communities long before European settlement.

The 20th century brought occupation, revolution and unrest: Japanese rule from 1942, a violent counter-insurgency campaign by Dutch forces in 1946–47 during the struggle for independence, and the long Darul Islam rebellion in the surrounding countryside in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1971 the city was renamed Ujung Pandang, after the old fort, and it reverted to Makassar in 1999. Since then it has grown quickly as the administrative, university and transport capital of eastern Indonesia, with reclaimed land extending the shoreline south of Losari.

This is a Bugis and Makassarese city, and the sea is at the centre of its self-image. The pinisi, the two-masted wooden schooner built by hand on the beaches of Bulukumba to the south, is the emblem of that tradition, and the boatbuilding art of South Sulawesi was inscribed on UNESCO's list of intangible cultural heritage in 2017; working examples still tie up at Paotere. Siri', a code of honour and shame, underlies social behaviour, and people are direct in speech while careful not to cause public embarrassment.

Makassar is also a city of students. Hasanuddin University and several others bring tens of thousands of young people from across eastern Indonesia, giving the city a lively café and music scene and a tradition of political demonstration. Older traditions persist alongside: the Bugis epic La Galigo, a vast verse cycle whose surviving manuscripts were added to UNESCO's Memory of the World register in 2011, is a source of local pride, and the royal regalia of Gowa are kept in the museums.

Life is public and takes place after dark, when the heat eases. Families walk the Losari platforms, coffee houses fill, and food is eaten late. Islam shapes the week, with Friday prayers emptying offices, but the city's Chinese, Toraja and Christian communities keep their own calendars and their temples and churches stand openly among the mosques.

About 1.5 million people live in the city proper and some 2.8 million in the Mamminasata metropolitan area, which takes in Gowa, Maros and Takalar. The city is the administrative and commercial capital of eastern Indonesia: government offices, banks, hospitals and universities employ a large share of residents, the port handles cargo for Sulawesi and the islands beyond, and the airport connects the whole east of the country. Fishing, seafood processing, cement, nickel-related logistics and cocoa, shipped from the plantations inland, round out the economy.

Housing runs from the old low-rise kampung near the harbour to towers and gated estates in Panakkukang and Tanjung Bunga, built on land reclaimed from the sea. That reclamation, along with drainage, flooding in the rainy season and the condition of the fishing settlements squeezed between new developments, is a recurring source of argument in the city.

Daily rhythm starts before dawn with prayers and the fish market, runs through a hot and congested working day, and comes alive again in the evening along the water. Students, civil servants and traders dominate the streets; motorbikes dominate the roads. Traffic, flooding and the cost of housing are the standing complaints, along with the perennial question of whether the city's growth is reaching the neighbourhoods behind the seafront.

Makassar's cooking is rich and beef-heavy, and its best-known dishes are eaten across Indonesia. Coto Makassar, the signature, is a dark soup of beef and offal simmered for hours with ground peanuts, cumin and coriander, ladled into small bowls and eaten with burasa, rice cooked in coconut milk and wrapped in banana leaf. Konro is a soup of beef ribs coloured almost black by keluak nut; konro bakar takes the same ribs, grills them and covers them in peanut sauce. Pallubasa is a close relative of coto, enriched with toasted grated coconut and sometimes a raw egg yolk stirred in.

Fish and shellfish come off the boats each morning. Whole fish, squid and prawns are grilled over charcoal and served with dabu-dabu, a raw sambal of chilli, shallot, tomato and lime, or with a fermented shrimp sauce. Mie titi, crisp fried noodles under a thick savoury gravy, is a local invention of the Chinese community, and jalangkote, a fried pastry filled with vegetables and vermicelli, is the standard snack.

Sweet things belong to the waterfront. Pisang epe — half-ripe bananas grilled, pressed flat and drenched in palm-sugar syrup — is sold along Losari every evening, and es pisang ijo wraps banana in a green pandan dough with syrup, milk and shaved ice. Barongko, mashed banana beaten with egg and coconut milk and steamed in banana leaf, is the classic Makassarese sweet. Coffee from Toraja and the Bugis highlands is drunk everywhere, strong and sweet.