Hotel Savoy Homann
On Jalan Asia-Afrika — the grand boulevard the Dutch colonial government cut through Bandung in the 1920s — the Hotel Savoy Homann has stood as the city’s premier address since its streamlined white facade was completed in 1939. Architect A.F. Aalbers gave the building the full vocabulary of Dutch Nieuwe Zakelijkheid: bold horizontal banding, curved glass bay windows sweeping around the corners, a canopied porte-cochère, and an interior of terrazzo floors and chrome fittings. It was the hotel of choice for the Dutch Governor-General and visiting dignitaries, and its terrace bar was the social hub of what colonial guidebooks called “the Paris of Java.” The building entered world history on 18 April 1955 when leaders including Sukarno, Nehru, Nasser, Zhou Enlai, and Ho Chi Minh gathered here before the opening of the Asian-African Conference — the founding moment of the Non-Aligned Movement. Today it operates as a four-star heritage hotel managed by the Homann family descendants, its Deco interiors meticulously preserved.
At a glance
- Type
- Heritage hotel
- Period
- 1939 (extended from 1871 original)
- Style
- Art Deco / Dutch Nieuwe Zakelijkheid
- Location
- Jalan Asia-Afrika 112, Bandung, West Java, Indonesia
- Coordinates
- 6.9213° S, 107.6067° E
- Architect(s)
- A.F. Aalbers; Schoemaker brothers (1939 extension)
Overview
The Savoy Homann occupies a prime corner of Bandung’s historic core, opposite the Gedung Merdeka conference hall where the 1955 Asian-African Conference officially convened. Its streamlined white mass — punctuated by horizontal concrete fins, protruding circular bay windows, and a long glazed canopy over the main entrance — is one of the clearest examples of mature Deco modernism surviving in Southeast Asia. The building has operated continuously as a hotel since its construction, passing through Dutch colonial administration, Japanese occupation, Indonesian independence, and into the twenty-first century without fundamental alteration to its exterior or public rooms.
History
A hotel on this site dates to 1871, when the German-born Homann family opened a modest rest house to serve travellers on the Batavia-Bandung road. The first purpose-built hotel followed in the 1880s. By the 1920s Bandung was booming as the Dutch colonial government relocated administrative departments from steamy Batavia to the cooler mountain city; the old Homann building was wholly inadequate. A.F. Aalbers was commissioned to design a modern replacement in the Dutch Functionalist idiom then fashionable in the Netherlands. The Schoemaker brothers added a second wing in 1939, completing the building’s current footprint. After Indonesia’s independence in 1945 and the transfer of sovereignty in 1949, the hotel passed to Indonesian management and continued trading under the Homann name.
Architecture & Design
Aalbers worked in the tradition of Dutch Nieuwe Zakelijkheid (“New Objectivity”) — a rationalist offshoot of the Amsterdam School that stripped ornament in favour of honest structure and clean geometry. At the Savoy Homann, the primary facade elements are horizontal: continuous window bands separated by concrete sun-shade fins read as striped ribbons wrapping the corners. The signature element is a pair of curved glass bay windows that billow outward from the corner like the prow of an ocean liner — a motif shared with contemporaneous Streamline Moderne buildings in California and France. The entrance canopy of chrome and glass, the terrazzo lobby floor in geometric patterns, and the original Deco light fittings inside the dining room survive largely intact.
Cultural significance
The Savoy Homann’s importance transcends architecture. It is inseparably linked to the 1955 Bandung Conference, where twenty-nine newly independent Asian and African nations convened to assert a “third way” between the American and Soviet blocs. Sukarno hosted the opening reception in this hotel; its corridors carried the leaders who would define post-colonial geopolitics. The building is a listed cultural heritage property of the Indonesian government and is included in Bandung’s UNESCO nomination for its Art Deco urban ensemble. It also anchors the “Bandung Heritage Walk,” the most visited cultural itinerary in West Java.
Visiting today
The Savoy Homann operates as a four-star hotel; non-guests may visit the lobby, terrace café, and public rooms during daytime hours. The hotel runs guided heritage tours of its Deco interiors on weekends. A small exhibition in the lobby documents the 1955 Asian-African Conference with original photographs and documents. The adjacent Gedung Merdeka (now the Asian-African Conference Museum) is a ten-second walk and should be visited on the same itinerary.
Getting there
Bandung is served by Husein Sastranegara Airport (BDO) and by frequent train from Jakarta Gambir (3 hours, Argo Parahyangan express). The hotel sits on Jalan Asia-Afrika in central Bandung, walkable from Bandung train station (1.5 km north) or by ride-share. Trans Metro Bandung buses stop outside. From Jakarta by toll road the drive is roughly 2.5 hours.
Sources & resources
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