Map - Palembang (Kota Palembang)

Palembang is a capital city of the Indonesian province of South Sumatra. The city proper covers 400.61 km2 on both banks of the Musi River on the eastern lowland of southern Sumatra. It had a population of 1,668,848 at the 2020 Census. Palembang is the second most populous city in Sumatra, after Medan, and the ninth most populous city in Indonesia.

The Palembang metropolitan area has an estimated population of more than 3.5 million in 2015. It comprises parts of regencies surrounding the city, including Banyuasin, Ogan Ilir, and Ogan Komering Ilir.

Palembang was the capital of Srivijaya, a Buddhist kingdom that ruled much of the western Indonesian Archipelago and controlled many maritime trade routes, including the Strait of Malacca.

Palembang was incorporated into the Dutch East Indies in 1825 after the abolition of the Palembang Sultanate. It was chartered as a city on 1 April 1906.

Palembang was the host city of the 2011 Southeast Asian Games and the 2018 Asian Games along with Jakarta. The first light rail system in Indonesia was operated in Palembang in July 2018.

The city attracted 2,011,417 tourists in 2017, including 9,850 foreign tourists. Traffic jams, floods, slums, pollution, and peatland fire are problems in Palembang.

Some believe that the name "Palembang" is derived from the word limbang in Malay. By adding the prefix pe- which indicates a place or situation, the city's name means "a place to pan gold and diamond ores". It is said that during antiquity, the ruler ordered gold and diamond miners to pan their ores in the city for security and surveillance reasons.

Others say that the name comes from the word lembang in Malay. By adding the same prefix, the city's name means "a place where the water leaks". It also means "a place which was constantly inundated by water". It refers to the geographical features of Palembang, which is a wetland.

Some say that the name was given by four brothers who survived a shipwreck near Musi River during the Majapahit reign. It is said that on their way to a new colony in eastern Sumatra, when their ship was wrecked, all belongings in the ship sunk into the sea except a broken wooden box which the survivor used as rafts. The rafts were wobbled (limbang-limbang) by the waves until they drifted ashore to a land which was later named Palimbang by them.

Palembang also has a special Chinese character rendition like several cities in Indonesia. In modern Chinese, Palembang is written as 巨港. 巨 here is a sound-borrowing at Hokkien. Palembang is called Kū-káng 舊港 in Hokkien, meaning "Old Port"; 巨 is read kū in certain dominant dialects of Hokkien and was thus borrowed to use in place of 舊.