The History of Sriwedari Park as a Public Sphere: Jürgen Habermas’s Public Sphere Approach Rudy Wicaksono Herlambang 1,* , Andrik Purwasito 2 , Warto Warto 3 , Rahmanu Widayat 1 1 Faculty of Fine Arts & Design, Universitas Sebelas Maret Surakarta, Indonesia 2 Faculty of Social & Political Sciences, Universitas Sebelas Maret Surakarta, Indonesia 3 Faculty of Cultural Sciences, Universitas Sebelas Maret Surakarta, Indonesia *Corresponding author. Email: rudywicaksono@staff.uns.ac.id ABSTRACT Sriwedari is a cultural heritage which is full of historical value as the King's garden in the Pakubuwana X era. Since its inception, Sriwedari Park has been designed as a place of reflection and an amusement park for the royal family, until it was finally opened to the public. The purpose of this study is to see the history of Sriwedari Park in Surakarta as a public sphere for the wider community by looking into several aspects of the public sphere by using the approach of Jürgen Habermas. The results of this study explained that Sriwedari Park has a long history and is included in one of the historical-cultural heritages for the people of Surakarta City. The hectic atmosphere of Sriwedari Park is also more or less described in Kartodikromo's writings as a crowded place that is communal and becomes a public sphere. Sriwedari Park also has a spatial aspect in facilitating the wider community to build public interactions, mainly in self-expression and political deliberation. Keywords: Sriwedari Park, Surakarta, Jürgen Habermas, Public Sphere, Politics 1. INTRODUCTION Surakarta has an interesting attraction with its beauty and exotic cultural heritage. It has a long history, and many cultural heritages still stand firmly in almost every corner of the city. There are old buildings with exotic shapes such as the Dutch building complex in the Gladak area, historic buildings as the center of Javanese civilization, and the Surakarta Palace and Mangkunegaran Palace which have sublime architectural arts, with all of them are still preserved in Surakarta [1]. There are several amusement parks such as Balekambang Park and Sriwedari Park. The two parks located in Surakarta are relics of royal gardens, or Kebon Raja, owned by the King [2]. One of the parks that has undergone significant changes is Sriwedari Park, which is now forgotten and unkempt. Sriwedari Park was once a large park as a place for Surakartans to gather and relax. The park was established by Pakubuwana X on an area of 17,000 m2 or about 1.7 hectares [3]. It was built on the command of Pakubuwono X and has functioned since 1901 until now. Its initial establishment purpose was as a place of recreation with elements of arts and culture as well as a resting place for the royal family. Thus, many people came and visited the park to enjoy the charming garden and watch art events. The wayang orang (drama version of Javanese puppet show) was one of the popular shows and the main attraction for Sriwedari Park. There were also several other supporting facilities in introducing wayang culture, including the puppet museum and the Javanese wayang library [4]. After the independence of the Republic of Indonesia, the Solo government provided a public Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 629 2nd International Conference on Social Science, Humanities, Education and Society Development (ICONS 2021) Copyright © 2022 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL. This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license -http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. 8