Gedong Kirtya Museum is located in the complex of Sasana Budaya, where also the Puri Agung, the old palace of the Buleleng Kingdom—realizing the potential of the library as a tourist attraction and its historically interesting location, ex-Bupati of Buleleng Drs. Ketut Wirata Sindhu in 2008 decided to upgrade the Gedong Kirtya library into a full museum.
This museum collects, copies and preserves thousands of lontar (manuscripts made of palm leaf), “prasasti” (transcriptions on metal plates) and books. All of those ancient writings contain various information about human life, such as religion, architecture, philosophy, genealogy, homoeopathy, “usada” (medical manuscripts), black magic, and so on, in the Balinese, Kawi (old Javanese) and the Dutch, English and German language.
Gedong Kirtya Museum has two arch gates that are still original and well preserved. In each entrance, there is any information about what years it was manufactured. The outer gate was made on June 3, 1939, and the inner gate was made on May 31, 1933. Both of these arch gates look ancient and original made of brick, cement and sand. Some parts of the gates are decorated with relief of Mahabarata puppet stories. Based on the information from the head of the museum, there were only two main buildings back in a few decades ago, the Kirtya Building as a place to store palm trees, and warehouse building located at the back area of museum. Now there are five new buildings in the museum area, three office buildings, a traditional pavilion called bale bengong for multi-functioned purposes and a toilet. The Kirtya Building was made during the Dutch colonial period, which later then handed to a Dutch foundation, then Bali Documentation Center, and on 1986 it was finally given to the Buleleng Regency government. In the museum yard, there is a beautiful garden area that is decorated with pule trees (local variant of palm trees commonly grown for gardenscape), red frangipanis trees and carpet of green grass.
Gedong Kirtya was built in Singaraja by a Dutchman named L.J.J Caron who came to Bali to meet with kings and religious leaders to discuss about Bali literary arts (lontar). He believed that all lontar that were stored in Gedong Kirtya is a treasure that should be preserved so that it won’t be damaged or lost. Before known as the museum, this area was known as a foundation named “Kirtya Lefrink – Van der Tuuk” which was deliberately established to protect Balinese literary arts. F. A Lefrink was an assistant regent of the Dutch government in Bali who was very interested in Balinese Culture and also had written many books about Bali and Lombok. He also worked together with Dr H. Van der Tuuk, who was a historian who gave his land and buildings to be used as this museum.
