Merapi Volcano Museum

Merapi Volcano Museum

Indonesian lies on the junction of the earth plate. Consequently, Indonesia becomes a seismic zone. Morover, Indonesia is included the ring og fire of 500 volcanoes among which 129 are active. The number covers 13 percent of total active volcanoes in the world. It reaffirms that Indonesia is located in a disater-potential area. Therefore, there must be some mitigation effort to press the number of victims when disaster occurs.

Merapi Volcano Museum is a new tourist site at the southern slope of Merapi built to give solution to the above problem. This tourist object was designed as an ongoing conservation and education site as well as developing knowledge on volcanic disaster, earthquake, and other disaster. It was inaugurated on October 1, 2009 by the Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources, Purnomo Yusgiantoro.

The slogan of the museum is "Merapi Jendela Bumi" [ Merapi the Window of the world]. It is 4.470 square meters and occupies as wide as 3,4 acres of land and it is a two-story building. The first floor contains museum collections which are divided into several rooms with different themes. There are the volcano world, on The Merapi Volcano Trail, Manusia dan Gunung Api [mankind and volcano], earthquake and Tsunami, Landslide, and other supporting facilities. The second floor functions as a theater showing movies about volcano. Currently it is still under construction.

Features:
Cool - rather cold - temperature welcomes you when you move from the parking area to the museum yard. If the weather is nice, you can see the elegant peak of Merapi and shady trees scenery behind the museum. Stepping on each stair-case of the museum yard will remind you of the main gate of Ratu Boko Temple complex. It is no exaggeration to say since the building concept of Merapi Volcano Museum is closely related to Javanese philosophical values. The architecture of the museum itself represents the shapes of temple [main gate and yard], Tugu Jogja [Jogja Monument-at the top of the building] and Mount Merapi [the entire building], and the concept of keraton [palace] as the world image [centripetal building plan].

Merapi Volcano Museum is designed to be the center of information, research, education and tourism on volcanoes all over the world in general and mount Merapi in particular. It is a worth-visiting site, Students from different level of education are suggested to visit this museum because there are many information presented complete with the visualization. Thus, the learning prosess about volcano will become more interesting and not boring.

Location Merapi Volcano Museum :
Merapi volcano museum is located at the southern slope of Mount Merapi, precisely at Boyong Street, Dusun Banteng, Desa Hargobinangun, Kecamatan Pakem, Kabupaten Sleman, Daerah Istimewa Yogyakarta, Indonesia.