Laweyan is Solo's oldest batik district, a neighbourhood of high-walled merchant compounds where the batik industry has been centred for five centuries. The architecture is a mixture of traditional Javanese joglo houses and the solid Dutch colonial buildings of prosperous textile merchants, their walls hiding courtyards and workshops behind ornate gates.
Walking the lanes of Laweyan gives a sense of how the batik trade shaped the city's social structure. The batik merchants of Laweyan were among the first Indonesians to achieve significant wealth independent of the colonial system, which made them an early centre of nationalist sentiment. Today the neighbourhood supports a cooperative of batik producers, and many workshops welcome visitors.