Gombong is a

town A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. Origin and use The word "town" shares an ori ...

Kebumen Regency Kebumen Regency ( jv, ꦏꦼꦧꦸꦩꦺꦤ꧀, Kêbumèn) is a regency in the southern part of the Indonesian province of Central Java. It covers an area of 1,281.115 km2 and had a population of 1,159,926 at the 2010 Census and 1,350,438 at ...

, in the southern part of

Central Java Central Java ( id, Jawa Tengah) is a province of Indonesia, located in the middle of the island of Java. Its administrative capital is Semarang. It is bordered by West Java in the west, the Indian Ocean and the Special Region of Yogyakarta in t ...

, a province in

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

. The town has 50,300 inhabitants at the 2020 Census. The total land area is . Local people speak Banyumasan, a dialect of Javanese. In 1964, construction of the Catholic Church of St. Michael Parish was completed. In 1996,the ''Wonokriyo market'' was built, becoming the biggest one in the region. A few dinosaur statues are located around the town: at the entrance of Fort Van der Wijck, at Tirta Manggala Swimming Pools and at Sempor Reservoir. Not far from the town, the prayer house Geraja Ayam, also known as the ''chicken church'', is built. Fort Van der Wijck, which was built in the early 19th century by General

Johannes Van den Bosch Johannes, Count van den Bosch (2 February 1780 – 28 January 1844) was a Dutch officer and politician. He was Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies (1830–1833), commander of the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army, Minister of Colonies ...

, is located in the northern part of the town. The military compound served to train soldiers for later service in the

Royal Netherlands East Indies Army The Royal Netherlands East Indies Army ( nl, Koninklijk Nederlands Indisch Leger; KNIL, ) was the military force maintained by the Kingdom of the Netherlands in its colony of the Dutch East Indies, in areas that are now part of Indonesia. The ...

Suharto Suharto (; ; 8 June 1921 – 27 January 2008) was an Indonesian army officer and politician, who served as the second and the longest serving president of Indonesia. Widely regarded as a military dictator by international observers, Suharto ...

, the second

President of Indonesia The President of the Republic of Indonesia ( id, Presiden Republik Indonesia) is both the head of state and the head of government of the Republic of Indonesia. The president leads the executive branch of the Indonesian government and is ...

, began his service here on 1 June 1940 prior to the Japanese occupation). The fort was used by the

Indonesian Armed Forces , founded = as the ('People's Security Forces') , current_form = , disbanded = , branches = , headquarters = Cilangkap, Jakarta , website = , commander-in-chief = Joko Widodo ...

until 2000. Since then the compound has been developed as a recreational site.

Administrative villages

Gombong consists of 14

villages A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to ...

(''kelurahan'' or ''desa'') namely: # Banjarsari # Gombong # Kalitengah # Kedungpuji # Kemukus # Klopogodo # Panjangsari # Patemon # Semanding # Semondo # Sidayu # Wero # Wonokriyo # Wonosigro

Notable people

Maus Gatsonides Maurice "Maus" Gatsonides (February 14, 1911 in Gombong, Kebumen Regency – November 29, 1998 in Heemstede) was a Dutch rally driver and inventor. Gatsonides was born in Central Java in the former Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). He founde ...

(1911), Dutch rally driver and inventor of the

speed camera In everyday use and in kinematics, the speed (commonly referred to as ''v'') of an object is the magnitude of the change of its position over time or the magnitude of the change of its position per unit of time; it is thus a scalar quantity. ...

. *

Jan Hamer Jan, JaN or JAN may refer to: Acronyms * Jackson, Mississippi (Amtrak station), US, Amtrak station code JAN * Jackson-Evers International Airport, Mississippi, US, IATA code * Jabhat al-Nusra (JaN), a Syrian militant group * Japanese Article Numb ...

(1927), Dutch survivor during

hurricane Katrina Hurricane Katrina was a destructive Category 5 Atlantic hurricane that caused over 1,800 fatalities and $125 billion in damage in late August 2005, especially in the city of New Orleans and the surrounding areas. It was at the time the cost ...

featured in the 2007 book ''Holding Out and Hanging On: Surviving Hurricane Katrina'' by Thomas Neff. *

Willem Nijholt Willem () is a Dutch and West FrisianRienk de Haan, ''Fryske Foarnammen'', Leeuwarden, 2002 (Friese Pers Boekerij), , p. 158. masculine given name. The name is Germanic, and can be seen as the Dutch equivalent of the name William in English, Gu ...

(1934), Dutch screen actor and stage artist

References

External links

*
Former Dutch fort Van Der Wijck
{{Portal, Indonesia Kebumen Regency Districts of Central Java Populated places in Central Java