The Republic of Indonesia has been independent since 1945 after having been the Dutch East Indies for more than 350 years. It is a huge country, stretching along both sides of the Equator for more than 46 degrees of longitude (roughly 5100 km or 3200 miles). Comprised of some 17,000 islands (more than 6000 inhabited islands), it has hundreds of major aids to navigation. Indonesia is divided into 38 provinces (provinsi) and the provinces are subdivided into county units called regencies (kabupaten). Maluku Province and North Maluku Province include the islands traditionally known in the West as the Moluccas or the "Spice Islands." The Moluccas lie east of Sulawesi (Celebes), south of the Philippines, and west of New Guinea. The Portuguese established a settlement in the islands at Ambon in 1526. They were replaced in 1609 by the Dutch, who established a second colonial settlement at Ternate. Today Ambon is the capital of Maluku province and Ternate was until recently the capital of North Maluku province. This page includes lighthouses of islands on the west end of the Moluccas including Buru in Maluku Province and the Sula Islands in North Muluku Province. The Maluku Sea is on the north side of these islands and the Banda Sea is on the south. More than 700 languages are spoken in Indonesia. The official national language, Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia), was standardized from a form of Malay that served as a lingua franca across the archipelago. In Indonesian a lighthouse is a mercusuar or a menara suar. Tanjung is a cape, ujung is a headland or point of land, bukit is a hill, sungai is a river, kuala or muara is an estuary or river mouth, pulau is an island, karang is a reef, batu is a rock, laut is a sea, selat is a strait, teluk is a bay, pelabuhan is a harbor, and labuhan is a port. It's also worth knowing that the word for an island is nusa in Balinese and gili in the Sasak language spoken on Lombok and in western Sumbawa. Aids to navigation in Indonesia are operated and maintained by the Directorate of Marine Navigation within the Directorate General of Sea Transportation ARLHS numbers are from the ARLHS World List of Lights. Admiralty numbers are from volumes F and Q of the Admiralty List of Lights & Fog Signals. U.S. NGA List numbers are from Publication 112.
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Maluku Province: Buru Lighthouses
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North Maluku Province: Sula Islands Lighthouses
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Information available on lost lighthouses:
Notable faux lighthouses:
Adjoining pages: Northeast: Northern Maluku | East: Central Maluku | West: Southeast Sulawesi
Return to the Lighthouse Directory index | Ratings key
Posted December 31, 2008. Checked and revised January 12, 2025. Lighthouses: 34. Site copyright 2025 Russ Rowlett and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.