Dutch Square, Malacca

Dutch Square, Melaka (9 July, 2005)


Malacca Town Square (GPS: 2.19452, 102.24918), also known as the Dutch Square, is one of the best recognised places in Malacca, almost a Malacca icon in the same level as the Porta de Santiago.

Around the Town Square are all the major Malacca landmarks. This includes the Tan Beng Swee Clock Tower, the Queen Victoria Diamond Jubilee Fountain, the Malacca Town Square, the old General Post Office (nowadays made the Youth Museum) and biggest of them all, the Stadthuys.

All the buildings here wear a coat of maroon paint, giving the square a decidedly foreign feel not found anywhere else in Malaysia. Unlike popular perception, however, the buildings were not originally painted maroon as you see today. Instead they were faced with bricks. When the authorities discovered the the brick façade leaks, they covered it with plaster and painted it white. Later, in the 1920s, the British changed the colour to a bright salmon red. The present local authorities darkened the colour further, so now we have the buildings in a maroon colour.

Dutch Square is on the Map of Malacca

Model in the Museum of Ethnography showing Dutch Square as it once was. (19 July, 2009)


Colourful, floral parasols on the Melaka trishaws parked at Dutch Square (9 July, 2005)


Melaka trishaw man waiting for business at Dutch Square (9 July, 2005)

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