The Portuguese arrived in 1512, the first Europeans to reach these waters, and promptly built Fort Laha as a base for trade and Catholic proselytizing. They lasted less than a century. On February 22, 1605, the Dutch admiral Steven van der Hagen captured Fort Victoria without firing a single shot, and Ambon became the headquarters of the Dutch East India Company -- the VOC -- until the founding of Batavia in 1619. For those nine years, this small island was the administrative capital of Dutch commercial power across all of East Asia. The prize was cloves: Ambon was the world center of clove production, and the Dutch enforced that monopoly by prohibiting clove cultivation on every other island they controlled. The English tried to establish a rival foothold at Cambello around 1615, but the arrangement ended badly in 1623 with the Amboyna massacre, an event that served as propaganda justifying three separate Anglo-Dutch wars -- with Oliver Cromwell using it in the First (1652–54) and Charles II's government reviving it for the Second and Third.

The twentieth century brought a different kind of violence. During World War II, Japanese forces overran the Dutch military base in the 1942 Battle of Ambon, and the aftermath included the Laha massacre, in which more than 300 Allied prisoners of war were executed. The ANZAC War Cemetery near Ambon town still hosts annual services every April 25, and Australian and Dutch families continue to make the long journey to pay respects. Decades later, following the fall of President Suharto in 1998, sectarian tensions between Muslims and Christians ignited into open conflict. Thousands died before a government-mediated agreement in 2002 brought an uneasy ceasefire. The healing has been slow but real. In 2009, the city erected the Gong Perdamaian Dunia -- the World Peace Gong -- as a symbol of reconciliation. By 2022, Ambon had earned recognition as one of Indonesia's top ten most tolerant cities from the Setara Institute, a transformation that felt almost miraculous given what the previous two decades had witnessed.

Walk through downtown Ambon in the evening and you will hear it: music drifting from open doorways, from food stalls along Jalan Sam Ratulangi, from impromptu gatherings near the dancing water fountain that lights up the waterfront after dark. In 2019, UNESCO designated Ambon a Creative City for Music -- the first in all of Southeast Asia to receive that distinction. The island's musical culture runs deep, fed by centuries of cultural blending. Ambonese Malay, the local creole language, carries traces of Dutch, Portuguese, and dozens of indigenous tongues, and the music reflects that same layering. Traditional Tifa drumming coexists with pop, rock, and the kind of soulful ballads that have made Moluccan musicians famous across Indonesia and, improbably, in the Netherlands, where a diaspora community of some 40,000 has kept the musical tradition alive in a very different climate.

The food of Ambon is port-city cooking at its most inventive. Ikan kuah kuning -- saltwater fish in a turmeric-bright yellow broth -- is the island's signature dish, traditionally eaten with papeda, a sago starch porridge with a glutinous, almost translucent texture that takes newcomers by surprise. Alongside it comes sambal colo-colo, a sharp, raw condiment of tomatoes, lime, chili, and shallot that cuts through the richness of everything else on the table. Kohu-kohu, a green salad tossed with tuna, shredded coconut, and lime, could hold its own in any culinary capital. For breakfast or a late-night snack, nasi kuning Ambon -- yellow rice with an assortment of sides -- is sold on practically every corner. And then there is kopi rarobang, a spiced coffee drink enriched with walnut and condensed milk that manages to be both dessert and stimulant. The downtown is pedestrian-friendly enough that an afternoon of eating your way through it is both feasible and advisable.

Ambon today functions as a hub for the wider Maluku region, a launching point for journeys that once drew European navies halfway around the world. The Banda Islands -- the original Spice Islands, where nutmeg once grew nowhere else on Earth -- lie an hour away by propeller plane or a full day by sea. Buru, with its cajeput oil plantations, is a 45-minute flight. The Kei Islands offer white-sand beaches that rival anything in the Maldives, and from the port city of Masohi on neighboring Seram, trails lead to Manusela National Park and the summit of Mount Binaiya, the highest peak in all of Maluku. The ferries and small planes that connect these islands operate on schedules that reward patience, but the destinations justify the wait. Ambon itself, with its hillside neighborhoods spilling down toward the bay, its mix of mosques and churches standing within blocks of each other, and its mornings still wrapped in the dew that gave the island its name, remains the place where the journey properly begins.