House of Sampoerna

The House of Sampoerna is the best museum in Surabaya and worth a morning of anyone's time. It occupies a beautifully restored Dutch colonial compound in the old city, and traces the rise of one of Indonesia's biggest tobacco companies from a small hand-rolled cigarette operation to a national brand.

The museum is genuinely interesting rather than simply promotional, with good exhibits on the history of kretek (clove cigarettes), the colonial spice trade, and the role of Chinese-Indonesian entrepreneurs in the city's commercial life. The factory floor where workers hand-roll cigarettes can be viewed from a gallery above. The café in the courtyard is a good place to recover from the heat. Entry is free.

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A story
The complex was originally an orphanage built by the Dutch in 1862. Liem Seeng Tee, the founder of the Sampoerna tobacco empire, bought it in 1932 and converted it into a kretek cigarette factory. Workers still hand-roll cigarettes inside — the figure quoted is around 500 cigarettes per worker per hour — watched through glass windows by museum visitors.