The Travellers Official Information Bureau released hundreds of different publications, often in great volumes. Besides leaflets, travel guides, postcards and maps, it also published its own magazine, Tourism in Netherland India. This issue of Tourism in Netherland India is almost in its entirety dedicated to the Prambanan. This vast ninth-century Hindu temple complex is located near the town of Yogyakarta in Java. After the collapse of the temples following a severe earthquake in the sixteenth century, restoration work was begun in the early nineteenth century. Today, the Prambanan is one of the most popular tourist attractions of Indonesia, and Hindu ceremonies take place here as well. The temple complex became a must-see as early as the colonial era, so it is little wonder that the travel guide See Java also includes the sight in its suggestions for a ‘trip through Java’. This guide from 1939 claimed that once the restoration was completed in some eight to ten years, Java would have a group of temples that was ‘even more imposing and impressive than the world-famous Borobudur’. Reconstruction work on the Prambanan has been continuing to the present day.
The Travellers Official Information Bureau, Tourism in Netherland India. 11 (1935) 6 (Prambanan Number). [1818 C 6:2-11]
The Travellers Official Information Bureau of the Netherlands Indies, See Java. Batavia [1939]. [1808 G 22]