Hotel Tugu Lombok – The Old Ampenan Reception House

hotel tugu lombok - the old ampenan reception house

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An almost two-hundred-years-old building that used to be a reception house during the Dutch colonial times welcomes the guests to Hotel Tugu Lombok – a priceless heritage reminding us of the old houses in the old capital Ampenan before the war in 1894. (Also known as the Expedition Year of Lombok).

The old capital of Ampenan was once a village where the natives and immigrants lived together peacefully. Years after the attack of the Dutch against Bali towards the end of the 19th century, the immigrants were relocated based on individual ethnicity. This is the beginning of the Arab Village, the Malay Village, the Chinatown, and the European area in the southern part of Ampenan.

This reception house now reconstructed at Hotel Tugu Lombok belonged to a Malay man, Tuan Haji Abdul Kadir from Sumatra in the early 19th century who rented it to a Chinese businessman. This is the reason the house incorporates Malay, Arabic, Chinese and European influences.

During the Dutch occupation times, the colonial government reorganized the island based on each individual ethnicity. It was in one of these years that this reception house was knocked down, originally planned to be reconstructed somewhere else where the Malay population was to be relocated. However, for some unclear reason this never happened, the house was never reconstructed, and became a part of the forgotten history of Lombok.