Current Time in Pekalongan, Indonesia

Pekalongan sits on the northern coast of Central Java, roughly midway between the port cities of Semarang and Cirebon, where the flat coastal plain meets the Java Sea. Behind the town rise the volcanic slopes of the Dieng highlands, and in front lies a shoreline of fishing harbours, shrimp ponds and mangroves. The climate is hot and humid throughout the year, with a pronounced wet season from November to March.

The city has a population of around three hundred thousand and is best known by a nickname that appears on signs at every entrance: Kota Batik, the city of batik. Pekalongan produces more batik cloth than anywhere else in Indonesia, and in 2014 it became the country's first city admitted to the UNESCO Creative Cities Network in the field of crafts and folk art.

The settlement developed as a coastal trading port in the era of the Javanese sultanates and grew under Dutch colonial rule, when sugar mills, a railway and a harbour were built. Its position on the great post road along the north coast, laid out at the beginning of the nineteenth century, made it a natural stopping place. Merchants from China, the Arabian peninsula, India and Europe settled here, and their descendants still form distinct neighbourhoods. That mixture is exactly what made local batik different: while inland court batik used restrained browns and indigos, the coastal workshops of Pekalongan adopted bright reds, pinks and greens and motifs of birds, flowers and even European bouquets, along with Chinese phoenixes and Japanese-influenced designs from the wartime period.

Visitors usually begin at the Batik Museum, housed in a colonial building, where the whole history of the craft is explained and workshops teach the wax-resist technique. The Jetayu square nearby is surrounded by handsome Dutch-era offices, and the old Arab quarter, the Chinese temples and the grand mosque show the layers of settlement. The wholesale batik markets at Setono and Grosir are vast, and small home workshops throughout the city welcome curious travellers.

Local festivals are memorable. The Syawalan celebration a week after the end of Ramadan features a lopis raksasa, a giant cone of sticky rice several metres high that is cut and shared with the crowd. Fishermen hold sea offering ceremonies, and the food culture centres on grilled fish, the spicy tauto soup and megono, a dish of chopped young jackfruit.

The Pantura highway and the trans-Java toll road pass close by, and trains on the main north coast line link the city to Jakarta, Semarang and Surabaya. Local transport relies on becak, minibuses and motorcycles. The University of Pekalongan and a state Islamic university provide higher education.

Pekalongan faces a serious challenge from tidal flooding and land subsidence, and defences are being strengthened, but the city remains resilient, creative and welcoming, and it is the essential destination for anyone who wants to understand Indonesian textiles.