Where to Stay in Singaraja, Provinsi Bali

What is Singaraja known for?

Singaraja carries the look of a former colonial administrative capital, with old houses standing back in large gardens and avenues cut broader than the usual run of Bali towns. Gedong Kirtya keeps the records. That collection, along with the Buleleng Museum and the Soenda Ketjil Museum, makes the town a place for reading Bali's past rather than for lying on a beach.

What are the main landmarks in Singaraja?

Three names hold the record. Gedong Kirtya, the Buleleng Museum and the Soenda Ketjil Museum account for what Singaraja puts on show, and all three sit close enough together to be taken in on one walk. The streets count as much.

Broad avenues and old houses in large gardens survive from the town's time as an administrative capital of Bali and the Lesser Sunda Islands, and walking them gives a clearer sense of that period than any single building could.

What is the history of Singaraja?

Singaraja governed more than Bali. The town served as the colonial administrative capital of the whole of the Lesser Sunda Islands, an authority far larger than the seat of a regency, and the scale of that role still shows in the width of its streets. The name says lion king.

Singaraja translates that way in Indonesian, and the title fits a place that once held the offices for an island chain rather than for a single district. A founding date is missing from the record. What the record gives instead is a sequence of roles, from colonial capital of Bali and the Lesser Sunda Islands to seat of Buleleng Regency and centre of Buleleng District.

The buildings kept up. Old houses set in large gardens still stand along the wider avenues, and they read as the residue of an administration that has moved elsewhere while the fabric it built stayed put. Gedong Kirtya holds the paper side.

Together with the Buleleng Museum and the Soenda Ketjil Museum it preserves what a port town in northern Bali accumulated across the years it spent as the administrative centre of a much larger territory.

Where is Singaraja?

North Bali starts here. Singaraja stands on the northern shore of the island, the largest town of that coast, with Lovina just to the west and Buleleng District spreading about 46.94 square kilometres around it. The water is the boundary.

A port town on an island coast has one fixed edge and one open one, and Singaraja's ground runs inland from the harbour into the wider country of Buleleng Regency.

What is the climate of Singaraja?

The sea keeps the extremes off. Singaraja sits on Bali's northern shore south of the equator, and an island town in the tropics runs warm and even through the year rather than swinging between seasons. Rain marks the calendar instead.

The wet months arrive in force and the dry ones clear, which is the distinction that matters when choosing when to walk the wide streets of Buleleng District.

How do you get to Singaraja?

The coast road does most of the work. Singaraja lies just east of Lovina on the northern shore, so arrivals from the west come along that shore and arrivals from the south cross the interior of Bali to reach it. The harbour still functions.

A port town takes traffic by water as well as by road, and both routes end in the same compact centre of Buleleng District.