Villa Isola Fish Pond

A father with his daughters enjoying the fish pond at the southern garden of Vila Isola on a Sunday morning.

I have previously posted several photos and stories about this villa before. As you may remember from those posts, Vila Isola is one of Bandung's most iconic art-deco architectural heritage. Built as a private residence in the early 1930s for an Italian-Dutch media tycoon Dominique William Berretty, the founder of the Aneta press-agency in the Dutch East Indies, Vila Isola was turned into a hotel just after his death in 1934. Then it became the Bandung headquarters of Japanese occupational army in the early 1940s when Japanese Imperial Army occupied the Indonesian archipelago and an Indonesian resistance army militia headquarters during the wars for independence. After the Indonesian Independence, it was renovated and made as the central piece of the newly established Teachers' Education College or PTPG campus in 1954.

The name of the college in which this building stands has changed several times since then: Fakultas Keguruan dan Ilmu Pendidikan (Faculty of Teacher Training and Pedagogy) or FKIP of the newly established Padjajaran University in 1958, Institut Keguruan dan Ilmu Pendidikan (Institute of Teacher Training and Education Science) or IKIP Bandung in 1963, and Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia (Indonesia University of Education) or UPI in 2004.

Since 2010, the building and its surrounding gardens have been renovated to revive its past grandeur. The renovation of the park that you can see at the background of the picture was completed this year and is now designated at Vila Isola Heritage Park.