The floating mosque
Set in a 6.9-hectare lake.
Arifmuttaqin — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Cep Budhi Darma — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Cep Budhi Darma — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Cep Budhi Darma — CC BY-SA 4.0
Al Jabbar Grand Mosque is West Java's provincial grand mosque, in Gedebage on Bandung's eastern edge. Opened in late 2022, it rises from a 6.9-hectare retention lake, hence its other name, the Gedebage Floating Mosque. Four 99-metre minarets mark its corners, and with its plazas it holds up to 60,000 worshippers. The province long relied on the older Grand Mosque on Bandung's main square; Ridwan Kamil says that as mayor he urged Governor Ahmad Heryawan to build a provincial mosque, and he designed it. Work began in late 2017 and paused in the pandemic; Kamil, by then governor, inaugurated it on 30 December 2022. Gedebage was marshland left by prehistoric Lake Bandung, so the mosque's lake also stores floodwater. A stepped roof of over 6,000 glass panels, laid like fish scales on a 99-metre steel span, covers a hall without central columns. Each of the 27 doorways bears the batik motif of one of West Java's cities and regencies, and the roof's finial echoes the skewer atop Gedung Sate. In the basement, Galeri Rasulullah traces the Prophet's life and Islam's spread to West Java with video mapping, dioramas and replicas. Lakeside gardens retell the prophets' stories. The mosque lies about 11 km east of Bandung's main square as the crow flies. Local trains stop nearby at Cimekar, high-speed trains from Jakarta at Tegalluar Summarecon; then take a taxi or ride-hailing car. Allow one to two hours. Weekends and school holidays clog the approach roads; after dark the building glows over the water. Saung Angklung Udjo is about 8 km north-west.
Set in a 6.9-hectare lake.
A free museum of the Prophet's life.
A batik motif for each city and regency.
Jalan Cimincrang, Gedebage, east Bandung
Reserve a free ticket in West Java's Sapawarga app, choosing a date and session, and show the QR code at the door; one account books up to five tickets, and on iPhone the app may be offered only in Indonesia's App Store, so make sure you can install it before you travel. The gallery opens Wednesday to Sunday, 09:00 to 15:00, with captions in Indonesian, Arabic and English, and places are limited, so book early.
Al-Jabbar, the Compeller, is one of the 99 names of God. The name also plays on Jabar, the usual short form of West Java, and on aljabar, Indonesian for algebra, which Ridwan Kamil says inspired the building's geometry.