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.

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.

Every year, Java's north coast advances imperceptibly seaward. Semarang owes its growth partly to the fact that it has not suffered as badly from the creeping mud as old rivals further east. When the Europeans first arrived, the greatest trading ports of Java were not Banten, Jakarta, Cirebon and Semarang, but obscure places, now almost forgotten by the world, on the curve of coast between Semarang and Surabaya.