jackfruit curry, is Yogya's speciality. Central Javanese food is the sweetest and least spicy in Indonesia, and makes much use of the soybean products tahu and tempe.
Insulated by Dutch policy from the changes sweeping other parts of Java during the late colonial period, Yogya was free to both maintain cultural traditions which had faded elsewhere and to innovate energetically indigenous Javanese themes. The Dutch helped with the preservation, as the Sonobudoyo Museum, a cultural museum that was opened in 1935, testifies; the innovation was all Yogya's own. Both tradition and innovation have contributed to the town's present aesthetic wealth. In the field of batik, the main trend was towards the conservative. Around Taman Sari and in the J1. Tirtodipuran neighborhood, workshops produce a variety of traditional and royal patterns.

WAYANG KULIT
Wayang kulit, the ancient shadowplay, is a whole way of life in Yogya. There are numerous craftsmen who produce the intricate leather puppets, and two schools for dalang (puppeteers). Several institutions offer regular public performances of this magical spectacle, sometimes even the traditional all-night version. As a repertoire, the Indian epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata are generally preferred over more recent Javanese and Middle Eastern stories. Yogya's dance, by contrast, tends to he highly untraditional. Although some sacred and court dances are preserved, the masked dance-dramas known from the 11 th century and still popular in West and East Java are seldom performed in Yogya. They have been replaced by the unmasked wayang wong, an 18th century innovation, and the sendratari, a Western-influenced dance spectacle without dialogue. The best-known example of this is the "Ramayana BalleC performed at Prambanan's Loro Jonggrang Theater.

Since the revolutionary, arts-oriented Taman Siswa school system was introduced in 1922, Yogya has developed into a center for the visual arts. Pioneers like Affandi, whose Affandi Museum is open to the public, used European oils and perspective, defying the Islamic taboos against human representation and ushering in the first wave of a new, confident and individualistic art.

SOLO AND SURROUNDINGS
The twin courts of Yogyakarta were only two of four princely states to survive the incremental Dutch conquest of Java. The others were in Surakarta, rnore commonly known as Solo, at the eastern foot of Mt. Merapi. Not as quick to move with the times as those of Yogya, the Solo courts were unable to reconcile themselves with the republic, and in June 1946 their prerogatives outside the palace walls were abolished forever. Today their old territories are simply part of the province of Central Java.

Some eight kilometers before Solo, on the road from Yogya, is the village of Kartasura, where a single crumbling brick wall is the only reminder that the capital of Mataram was here for 66 years. The Javanese courts were extraordinarily flexible: war, misfortune or the whim of a new king could lead to a capital's being transported (sometimes literally, for important pendopo could be dismantled and carried) to a new, safer or more auspicious site, leaving behind a mostly wooden ruin which was quickly reclaimed by tropical nature.

Kartasura was founded in 1680 when the previous capital at Plered (near Kota Gede, Yogyakarta) was occupied by an imposter; in 1746, after three years of disastrous war against the Dutch and their allies, Pakubuwana II decided to abandon the obviously unlucky site, and in 1746 he moved to the Kraton Hadin. ingrat in Solo, the fifth and final capital of Mataram. Though badly damaged by a fire in 1985, the kraton is still worth seeing. It contains a museum of regal pomp, a cannon from Portuguese Malacca (the "wife" of the one in Jakarta's Taman Fatilah), and a peculiar pagoda in which the "emperors" (as the Dutch called them) trysted with the Queen of the South Seas. There is also an important library of Javanese manuscripts. The last of the great Javanese court poets, Raden Ngabei Ronggawarsita, worked here until his death in 1873.

The Solo kraton remained the capital of Mataram for less than a decade. The king's brothers were still in revolt, and his son not only saw Mataram divided between Yogya and himself, but also had to suffer the foundation of a new junior court, the Mangkunegaran, under his very nose. Since the fire in Kraton Hadiningrat, this palace has upstaged the main kraton as a tourist attraction; sporting an imposing central pendopo of Javanese teak with an Italian marble floor, a famous gamelan, and a museum of topeng

masks and wayang puppets. It was twice restored by a Dutch architect, Thomas Karsten, before the war, and remains the best maintained of Java's kraton. The Mangkunegaran Palace is north of the Kraton Surakarta, across the railway tracks. Further north is an independent cultural museum, Museum Radyapustaka, which was founded in 1890.

Indonesia's first railway line, begun in 1867, linked Solo with Semarang. In earlier days the Solo river, Java's longest, carried boat traffic from Solo to the Strait of Madura, about 300 kilometers away.

In those times, Solo's wealth derived from the fertility of its lands and the labor of its subjects. Today, light industry is increasingly important. Solo's batik industry is organized on a larger scale than in Yogya. Some of the largest batik companies in Indonesia, including Batik Keris, have their headquarters here. Traditional Solo batik, famous for its natural, soft brown dyes against a mellow yellowish background, is still available at Pasar Klewer, the the main batik market.

Solo has no great temple complex in its vicinity to match Yogya's Prambanan. However, 36 kilometers to the east, on the slopes of Mt. Lawu, is one of the island's most intriguing and unusual antiquities, Candi Sukuh. Though within present-day Central Java, this temple historically belongs to East Java and Majapahit. Built around 1430, during the declining years of the empire, Sukuh is the end of the process of architectural and religious assimilation which began at Dieng; still a Hindu temple of sorts, but with the Indian elements all but overwhelmed by Javanese innovations. The central monument is a stepped pyramid, almost like a Mexican ruin. Some see this as a resurgence of a form of terrace used for ancestor worship long before Indian influences ever arrived in Java. Sukuh seems to be associated with a cult of the wayang hero Bima; in addition, a wealth of sexual imagery suggests a fertility cult. A realistic set of male and female genitalia carved in stone, fragrant with recent flower offerings, adorns the floor of one of the entrances. Despite the airy views from 910 meters and the erotic humor of the reliefs, Sukuh is an unsettling, almost demonic place in its setting of dark pines. With its images of animals - giant turtles, elephant men, staring pigs - it is reminiscent of a painting by Bosch.

Candi Ceto, built 50 years later, is also on Mt. Lawu, seven kilometers further north and 600 meters higher. Little remains of the original structure, but the pendopo and Balinese split gates have recently been reconstructed on the old terraces. Near Karangpandan, on the road to Sukuh and Ceto, is the spot which former-President Suharto has chosen as his final resting place. He was born and raised in the Yogya area, but Makam Suharto looks out over the broader sawah of the Solo valley. Suharto's elaborate mausoleum pendopo was completed in 1977, but will not be open to the public until he lies there in state.

Beyond Karangpandan, a road winds through misty forests to the mountain re sorts of Tawangmangu, which has marvelous gardens, and to Sarangan, the usual starting-point for an ascent of Mt Lawu. Sarangan is beyond the boundaries of the Yogyakarta Special Region and commands views over the old railway town of Madiun.

Sangiran, 15 kilometers north of Solo is an important anthropological site that was first excavated in the 1930s. The 1.8 million-year-old skulls found here have given rise to heated debate as to wether they represent a link between Pithecanthropus erectus and Homo sapiens. The Sangiran Site Museum displays replicas of these skulls, as well as plant fossils.

THE NORTH COAST

Tegal and Pekalongan are the first towns on the Central Javanese coast east of Cirebon. Tegal is a growing, light industrial center known mainly for its ubiquitous emigrants, who sell food from their war-teg (warung in Tegal) from Jakarta to Surabaya. Pekalongan, however, is Kota Batik (Batik City), where the wives of generals and diplomats order their batik. Before the war, Eliza van ZuyIen, a Eurasian working in Pekalongan, set technical standards for batik manufacture which have never been equalled, with her Dutch-inspired floral patterns. During the war, Japanese models inspired the town's famous Hokukai Batik. Today, Javanese, Arab, Chinese and European entrepreneurs design and produce batik here and, while there is reputedly such a thing as "traditional Pekalongan batik," the real "tradition" is one of innovation. The very best workshops, which take as much as eight months to complete a single piece, are in surrounding villages like Kedungwangi.

SEMARANG
The port of Semarang, not the old royal town of Solo, is the provincial capital and biggest city in Central Java. From 1678, when it was the first part of Mataram to be ceded to the VOC, until 1948, when it was the base for an airborne assault on Yogya, Semarang was a Dutch beach-head on the Javanese heartland and a conduit through which its wealth was extracted. Dutch warehouses and offices are still much in evidence downtown. An 18th-century church, Gereja Blenduk, with a green copper dome and an imposing classical portico, is still in use, although the baroque organ is no longer in working order, Much of its congregation is Chinese; Chinese traders were here long before the Dutch made Semarang their own, and have outlasted them as masters of Semarang's commerce. The Sam Poo Kong Temple in the southwest of the city, is dedicated to a sanctified Chinese Muslim said to have visited this coast in the 15th century Chinese and Indonesians worship together here. Klenteng Gang Lombok is a ore conventional Chinese temple, dating from 1772.

Although the old Chinatown is still distinguishable around the klenteng, the richer Chinese businessmen have abandoned the blackout-ridden, old town center to join their Indonesian patrons in the elite suburb of Candi Baru, on the hills overlooking the city.

Because of the massive social changes it has witnessed, Semarang's 20th century history has been turbulent. Henk SneevIiet, the Dutchman who introduced Marxism to the Indies in 1913, was active in the Railway Workers' Union here; he and his Javanese comrade Semaun made Semarang the capital of early Indonesian radicalism. Thirty years later, 2000 nationalist rebels died here in one of the most bizarre and tragic battles of the Indonesian revolution. After initially allowing Indonesians to take over, Japanese troops, on British orders, recaptured the city in October 1945. However, six days later the Japanese were relieved by "British" troops who were in fact Indians, themselves not-so-willing colonial subjects. The Tugu Muda Monument in the city center commemorates the Indonesian dead.