Jakarta’s biggest exhibition, the Jakarta Fair, opens today in Kemayoran, Central Jakarta, offering more products and entertainment than before. Held annually for the past 42 years under different names, the Jakarta Fair Kemayoran is organized to commemorate the anniversary of Jakarta’s founding, which falls on June 22.

In 1967, Jakarta Governor Ali Sadikin decided to hold a huge trading exhibition in the city inspired by the Pasar Malam Gambir, a night market started by the Dutch colonial administration decades before Indonesia gained its independence. The following year, the Jakarta Fair (it was then written as Djakarta Fair) attracted nearly 1.5 million people. And the next year, US President Richard Nixon attended the fair while visiting the country.

The exhibition area, located where the old airport was before being moved to its current address in Banten Province, covers some 40 hectares of land. This year’s fair will exhibit products from more than 2,500 mostly Indonesian companies — food, furniture, cars, motorcycles, electronics and many more.

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