Kraton of Yogyakarta
Place Daerah Istimewa Yogyakarta
Other and rejected name forms
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The palace of the Sultanate of Yogyakarta, founded in 1755 after the Treaty of Giyanti, laid out on a single north–south axis joining Mount Merapi, the palace and the Southern Ocean, and still both the seat of a special region's government and the holder of an annual ceremonial cycle.
The axis
The city is built on one line: the Tugu monument to the north, the palace at the centre, the Krapyak stage to the south, with Merapi at the northern end of that line and the Southern Ocean at the southern. The line is not merely town planning but a statement of position: the ruler stands between mountain and sea, between two powers whose relation must in the Javanese framework be kept. The labuhan offerings sent to Merapi, to Parangkusumo on the south coast and to Mount Lawu are the carrying out of that relation.
The axis was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2023 as the Cosmological Axis of Yogyakarta. The inscription covers urban space rather than buildings alone, which means that alteration to structures along the axis falls under protective provisions.
A court that governs
Yogyakarta is the only region in Indonesia whose governor is a king by virtue of being a king. The Special Status Law of 2012 provides that the reigning Sultan is Governor and the Duke of Paku Alam Deputy Governor, without election. Its basis is the decision of Sultan Hamengku Buwono IX on 5 September 1945 to join the sultanate to the newly declared Republic, answered by a guarantee of special standing.
The arrangement raises questions discussed openly in Yogyakarta, above all about succession to the throne and therefore to the governorship, and about sultanate land, which holds a legal status of its own. This entry states them because a reader arriving for an account of court ceremony meets an institution that is also a government.
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