Qualla: The Painter's Mansion That Became a Hospital

The Painter's Mansion That Became a Hospital: Introduction

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cun Cun, CC BY-SA 4.0. Antelope wandered the grounds until the early 1970s. Not the kind of detail you expect from a hospital in the middle of one of the world's most congested cities, but Cikini Hospital has never been an ordinary medical facility. The building at Jalan Raden Saleh No. 40 in Central Jakarta began its life in 1852 as a mansion designed by Raden Saleh, Indonesia's most celebrated nineteenth-century painter -- a man who had studied in the Netherlands, exhibited alongside European Romantics, and returned to the Dutch East Indies with enough ambition to build himself a residence with a private zoo. Lions, antelope, and other wild animals roamed his estate. The gardens were so extensive that when Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria stopped by in 1893 during his world tour, he found preparations underway for the Batavia Exhibition, staged on the mansion's grounds. Today, the 5.6-hectare compound still feels like a park dropped into the urban chaos of Menteng, its trees and gardens encircling a 300-bed hospital that has been caring for patients for more than 125 years.

Image: Cun Cun | CC BY-SA 4.0

The Painter's Mansion That Became a Hospital: The Painter and His Palace

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Woodbury & Page (Fotostudio). niet bekend / unknown (Fotograaf/photographer)., CC BY-SA 3.0. Raden Saleh Sjarif Boestaman was not merely a painter. He was the first Indonesian artist to gain international recognition, spending over twenty years in Europe where he studied under Cornelis Kruseman and Andreas Schelfhout, befriended European aristocracy, and painted dramatic...

Image: Woodbury & Page (Fotostudio). niet bekend / unknown (Fotograaf/photographer). | CC BY-SA 3.0

The Painter's Mansion That Became a Hospital: A Queen's Gift, A Hospital's Birth

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Baqotun0023, CC BY-SA 4.0. On March 15, 1895, a Dutch pastor named Cornelis de Graaf and his wife Adriana founded the Vereeniging Voor Ziekenverpleging In Indie -- the Association for Nursing in the Indies -- opening a modest medical center in Gang Pool, near the governor's state palace. The De Graafs need...

Image: Baqotun0023 | CC BY-SA 4.0

The Painter's Mansion That Became a Hospital: Occupation, Liberation, and the Long Handover

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cun Cun, CC BY-SA 4.0. The hospital's management reads like a compressed history of twentieth-century Indonesia. During the Japanese occupation from 1942 to 1945, Cikini Hospital served the Imperial Japanese Navy. After Japan's surrender, it was managed first by RAPWI -- the allied organization for rep...

Image: Cun Cun | CC BY-SA 4.0

The Painter's Mansion That Became a Hospital: A Garden Hospital in a Concrete City

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Woodbury & Page (Fotostudio). niet bekend / unknown (Fotograaf/photographer)., CC BY-SA 3.0. What makes Cikini unusual is not its medical services -- though it offers specialties from cardiology to oncology and runs a nursing academy -- but its setting. Five and a half hectares of gardens surround the hospital buildings, a remnant of Raden Saleh's original estate that ha...

Image: Woodbury & Page (Fotostudio). niet bekend / unknown (Fotograaf/photographer). | CC BY-SA 3.0