A ship on dry land
2,600 tonnes carried by the wave.
Si Gam Acèh — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Hillun Vilayl Napis — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Andy Doyle from Dublin, Republic of Ireland — CC BY 2.0
A huge vessel of some twenty-six hundred tonnes, a floating power-generating barge moored at sea, which the 2004 tsunami carried about three kilometres into the city and dropped onto two houses, killing those inside. It still rests where it landed, in the middle of a residential neighbourhood, a silent witness to the wave's force. The ship and its surroundings were restored in 2012 and 2013 into an open-air museum: you climb onto its deck and look out over the neighbourhood and the city, with two viewing towers, a memorial bearing victims' names, a raised walkway and a garden around it. Visitors stand before it astonished, imagining water carrying all this steel so far inland. In 2025 the city tourism office set an entry fee of about ten thousand rupiah; it opens from nine to half past five and closes during the midday and afternoon prayers. Half an hour to an hour is enough. The city has other tsunami landmarks, the best known a small boat that came to rest on a house roof at Lampulo, saving those who climbed into it.
2,600 tonnes carried by the wave.
Views over the neighbourhood and city.
Names of those lost in 2004.
Punge Blang Cut, west of central Banda Aceh
Kerkhof PeucutA Dutch military cemetery in central Banda Aceh where some two thousand Dutch so11 minutes walk4.6
Aceh Tsunami MuseumA museum commemorating the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami of 26 December 2012 minutes walk4.5
Gunongan Historical Park and Putroe PhangThe remains of a seventeenth-century royal garden, once known as the pleasure ga13 minutes walk4.3
Kandang XII Royal Tombs of AcehA royal cemetery of Aceh's early sultans in central Banda Aceh, known as Kandang18 minutes walk4.9
Baiturrahman Grand MosqueThe emblem of Aceh, the land Indonesians call the Verandah of Mecca because it w18 minutes walk4.8Yes, it is the very vessel the tsunami carried, exactly where it came to rest, restored only so visitors can go aboard safely.