Blue in the Architecture of Keraton Surakarta: A Semiotic Study of Color Meaning
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Abstract
Blue is a conspicuous feature of Keraton Surakarta, yet its meaning has not been examined in studies of the palace's architecture. This study reads that meaning through Roland Barthes' semiology, which separates the literal sign (denotation) from the cultural meaning attached to it (connotation). A qualitative interpretive approach was used, drawing on photographic documentation taken in 2024, informant accounts, and literature on the palace's history and cosmology. Blue appears as a light outline color on columns, beams, window and door frames, fretwork, eaves, and fences, set against white walls, while the roofs recorded are not blue. The recurrence of this pairing across buildings of different scale supports reading blue as a shared sign of the palace's identity. A spiritual meaning, linked to the palace's cosmology and to the associations of blue with the sky and the divine, is plausible but remains an interpretation, because no source ties blue to the court's own symbolism. The study cannot establish when or why blue became the palace color. It offers a documented denotative baseline and identifies repainting records and court archives as the next evidence to test.
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