Indonesia · Provinsi Maluku
Where to Stay in Ambon, Provinsi Maluku
Ambon is the capital of Maluku in eastern Indonesia, the chief city of the old Spice Islands, set on a deep bay of the Banda Sea.
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Where to stay in Ambon
The right area depends on your trip — here's what each neighbourhood is best for.
Where you stay in Ambon turns on the town or the bay. The streets around the centre keep the fort, the market, and the waterfront within a walk, and staying downtown suits anyone here for the city. The bay opens past the front.
Boats cross the harbour. Out toward the hills and the coast, the town gives way to spice gardens, villages, and quiet beaches. A room out of town trades the streets for the clove gardens, the diving reefs, and the green hills over the bay.
The forest climbs the slopes. Stay downtown for the fort, or out for the coast. Ambon's streets stand only a little back from the harbour, so neither choice strands you.
About Ambon
Ambon is the spice city of the Moluccas.
What is Ambon known for?
On a great bay of a green tropical island in the far east of Indonesia, it was the heart of the old Spice Islands that the world once sailed to for cloves and nutmeg, and it keeps an old European fort on the bay, the clove and nutmeg gardens of the hills, a deep harbour ringed by mountains, and a mixed Christian and Muslim life of the Moluccas. The green hills ring the bay. The warm sea fills the harbour.
What are the main landmarks in Ambon?
The old fort stands on the bay at Ambon. The stone fort raised by the Portuguese and held by the Dutch, guarding the harbour where the spice ships once loaded, looks out over the water, the emblem of the city, on the bay. Spice gardens climb the hills.
The clove and nutmeg trees of the island grow on the green slopes above, while the waterfront, the island museum, and the war cemetery mark the country around Ambon.
What is the history of Ambon?
Ambon was the heart of the spice trade. For cloves and nutmeg, which grew nowhere else, the powers of Europe fought for these islands, and the Portuguese, then the Dutch, seized Ambon and built a fort on the bay to hold the trade. The Dutch ruled by the clove.
Under the Dutch company Ambon became the centre of the spice islands, its gardens guarded and its trade held tight, and a Christian Ambonese people grew up under European rule. The islands knew war and revolt. Ambon rose against the Dutch under the hero Pattimura, and much later the great harbour and its island saw hard fighting in the world war.
The bay kept the town. Through it all Ambon held to its spices, its fort, and its mixed Moluccan life of Christian and Muslim villages, growing into the busy capital of the Maluku islands. The deep bay still holds the ships.
Ambon keeps its harbour and its spices in the Moluccas.
Where is Ambon?
Ambon lies in the far east of Indonesia, on the island of Ambon in the Maluku group. The city spreads along a great deep bay that cuts far into the green volcanic island, ringed by steep forested hills, in the warm island seas between New Guinea and Sulawesi. The bay reaches deep inland.
Green hills rise from the water.
What is the climate of Ambon?
The island's climate is tropical throughout: hot, and wet far more often than not. Warm damp weather holds all year on the island, with a heavy rainy season and warm seas around, the air steaming much of the year. The rains soak the green hills.
Warm days run much the same.
How do you get to Ambon?
Ambon lies in the far east of Indonesia, reached by sea and air across the Moluccas. Ships and planes bring most who come, sailing in from Sulawesi and flying from Jakarta, for the islands lie far out at sea. Boats cross the great bay.
Jakarta lies far to the west.
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Updated August 2026