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Serang

Capital city of Banten, Indonesia

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  • 6 chapters
Great Mosque of Serang, Banten province, Indonesia
JahlilMA · CC BY-SA 4.0

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Serang has a tropical rainforest climate, with no dry season month. It faces the Java Sea, which is home to the Thousand Islands.

Serang had a population of 576,961 in the 2010 census, making it the third most populous city in the province of Banten. The 2020 Census gave a total of 692,101; the official estimate as of mid-2023 was 735,651. Serang is located approximately 15 km from the border of Jabodetabek (the Jakarta Metropolitan Area), and is sometimes considered as amalgamated with Greater Jakarta.

Culture

Religion

The majority of people in Serang and Banten Province embrace Islam, but other religions coexist peacefully. Serang is often known as "kota santri" or the "city of pious people", due to the history as a traditional center of Islamic learning. The city hosts two of the major congregational mosques in Banten province, Ats-Tsauroh Great Mosque of Serang and Al-Bantani Grand Mosque, which hold the capacity of 2,500 and 10,000 worshippers respectively.

Language

Compared with the majority in Banten Province who speak the Sundanese language, some local residents in Serang also speak the Javanese language with a dialect similar to the Cirebon dialect of Javanese. The reason for this is that many Javanese migrants arrived in early 1527 to build the Banten Sultanate, and remained to form the base of today's population.

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