A place with over 500 years of history

When the first traffic lights were introduced in Melaka in the second half of last century, at the intersection of Bunga Raya and Newcome Roads, people from outlying areas would congregate there just to watch the lights change.

SQUALOR. Gambling. Opium. Prostitution. All these made up the vices along Jalan Bunga Raya, Melaka, in its history until the 1970s.

If you stand at one end of Jalan Bunga Raya, with Discovery Cafe on your left and Taj Grand Hotel on your right, this is where wealthy Chinese merchants used to live.

A lot of the two-storey colonial buildings still maintain the original architecture, with the iconic big windows and wooden shutters.

These old-style houses comprise shops on the ground floor and residence upstairs.

“During Chinese New Year, I used to hang out with my classmates on the balcony and we would throw live fire crackers down to the road.

Jalan Bunga Raya was synonymous with vice activities such as gambling and prostitution but by the turn of the 20th century, business picked up and then came the change in infrastructure. 

“It was fun and no one took offence. But that was then,” reminisced heritage enthusiast Colin Goh, a sprightly Melaka-born in his 70s.

The Bunga Raya area was a domain for fishermen and it was populated by Javanese people during the Sultanate period at the turn of the 14th century. During the Portuguese era, it mainly comprised orchards and coconut groves.

After the Dutch drove the Portuguese out of Melaka in 1641, they started kilns for making clay bricks and lime plaster in this suburb.

Today, as you walk along Jalan Bunga Raya, you can see some of the dark orange bricks from the etched out laterite stone walls, a symbol of the Dutch-Portuguese era and more importantly, how old the structures and materials are.