Pariaman

Pariaman is a coastal city on the west coast of Sumatra in the province of West Sumatra, Indonesia. It covers about 65 square kilometres and has roughly 12 kilometres of shoreline on the Mentawai Strait. The 2020 census counted 94,224 residents, up from 79,043 in 2010, and the official estimate for mid 2025 was 104,970. The name is said to mean safe area. By the sixteenth century it was an important port serving the Minangkabau settlements of the interior highlands, trading in pepper and gold; it later fell under the Sultanate of Aceh and, from 1663, under Dutch influence, and the Dutch abandoned their lodge and fort there in 1770. Pariaman became an autonomous city in 2002 when it was separated from Padang Pariaman Regency, which still surrounds it on its landward sides. Farming covers most of its land, and each year on 10 Muharram the city holds the Tabuik festival, a ceremony of Shia origin brought by former British soldiers from India in 1818.