Introduction

The heart of Java is named here because it focuses on the province of Yogyakarta, a culturally rich city located in Central Java. For centuries Yogyakarta (Yogya) was a royal kingdom and powerful trading centre, the seat of the powerful Mataram Empire. It is seen from historical records that civilization, art and culture had developed well in the center of those kingdoms.

Today, Yogya is best known as a city of rich culture and the arts. It is where the Javanese language is at its purest, Java's arts at their brightest and its traditions at their most visible. Yogya is fiercely independent and protective of its customs, and is currently the site of an uneasy truce between the old ways of life and the modern contemporary style. It is still headed by the Sultan, and contemporary Yogya is as much of a new modern city as the old one.

Globalization and modernization is slowly homogenizing the other cities in Java, but Yogya continues to juggle past and present with ease, sustaining a slower, more conservative way of life which constitutes kampong houses built near to throbbing main streets. Through this, Yogya's potency has long outweighed its size, and it is still Java's premier tourist city, with so many hotels, restaurants and attraction of its own.