Palimpsests of power: reading the heritage landscape of Villapark in Surakarta from New Order regime to the Reform era of Indonesia

Villapark, established as a residential area for the Dutch elite in the early twentieth century, has undergone significant transformations reflects the shifted in ways tied to broader political changes across Surakarta. This study examines how local elites appropriated the Villapark landscape as a political instrument to construct and sustain legitimacy from the New Order period to the Reform era. The concept of Palimpsests of Power explains how Villapark functions as a layered space of meanings, where colonial, national, and local symbols are continuously rewritten by ruling regimes. In relation to the palimpsest of power in Villapark, the combination of Peirce’s triadic semiotics, Foucault’s concept of disciplinary power, and Lefebvre’s theory of the production of space, and landscape archaeology provide an integrated framework for reading layered inscriptions of authority. Data were collected through fieldwork included walking sites, and spatial analyses of historical maps and photographs. The findings demonstrate that Villapark became an arena of contestation between colonial heritage and postcolonial authority, where spatial symbols were mobilised to shape new narratives of political legitimacy. Thus, Villapark can be understood as a site in which shifting regimes continuously produce, regulate, and re-signify space as a strategic medium for constructing and sustaining political authority.