AT A GLANCE
Why go?
In the sprawling green belt beside Jakarta's Taman Mini Indonesia Indah cultural park stands Masjid Agung At-Tin, one of Indonesia's great mosques and a defining landmark of East Jakarta. Commissioned by the family of second president Soeharto as a memorial to his late wife, Ibu Tien Soeharto, the vast Ottoman-styled complex pairs a single sky-piercing dome with slender minarets and a column-free prayer hall that can gather tens of thousands of worshippers at once.↗↗↗↗
For visitors it is a place of double interest: a working mosque of national stature, and a piece of late-1990s Indonesian history rendered in stone, glass and teak. Open every day from early dawn to night, it is easy to pair with the parks and pavilions of Taman Mini right next door.↗↗
A Memorial in the Name At-Tin
The mosque was built by the Yayasan Ibu Tien Soeharto, the family foundation of Hj. Fatimah Siti Hartinah Soeharto, the former First Lady known affectionately as Ibu Tien, who died in 1996. Construction began in 1997 and the completed complex was inaugurated in late 1999, the children and grandchildren realising the wish their mother had voiced—a gesture remembered by the family as an act of love and filial devotion.
