National Monument
The national monument is a 132 m obelisk in the centre of Merdeka square in central Jakarta. The National Monument or Monumen Nasional – Monas for short – symbolizes the struggles during the Indonesian National Revolution between the years 1945 and 1949. The construction of the monument started in 1961 and it was first open to the public in 1975. The monument encapsulates the philosophy of lingam and yoni, the harmony between the feminine and masculine energy of Shakti and Shiva. It also resembles the bloom of the amorphophallus titanum or titan arum, an endemic flower of Sumatra. In the outer yard of the monument there are reliefs that depict instances of the Indonesian history.