Heading east down Jalan Asia-Afrika, along the northern edge of the alun-alun, you come to the Gedung Merdeka building , which hosted the first Asia-Afrika Conference in 1955 and is known as the Asia-Afrika or Liberty building. Inside, a small museum commemorates the conference. Many of the delegates stayed at the nearby Art Deco Savoy Homann hotel, which opened in 1939 and is still one of Bandung's premier hotels. Slightly west of here is the beginning of Jalan Braga , the chic shopping boulevard of 1920s Bandung. There's still one bakery here that's tried to hang on to its history, and a few of the facades maintain their stylish designs. The side streets that run off Jalan Braga were notorious for their raucous bars and brothels - at night a lot of the seediness remains.

North of Jalan Braga, to the east of Kebun Raya park, off Jalan Sumatra, is the bizarre Taman Lalu Lintas, the " Traffic Park ". Designed to educate kids in the way of the highway, it has a system of miniature cars, roads and street signs. A twenty-minute walk to the northeast, the impressive Gedung Sate building at Jl Diponegoro 22, is known as the Sate Building because the regular globules on its gold-leaf spire resemble meat on a skewer. It was built in the 1920s and now houses local government offices. The excellent Geographical Museum (Mon-Thurs 9am-2pm, Fri 9-11am, Sat 9am-1pm; free) is nearby at Jl Diponegoro 57, and displays mountains of fossils, as well as several full dinosaur skeletons, a four-metre mammoth skeleton and a replica of the skull of the famous Java man.

About 750m west of the museum, Jalan Cihampelas, known to Westerners as Jeans Street , is lined with shops selling cheap T-shirts, bags, shoes and jeans (though these are no longer such a bargain). The shopfronts themselves are adorned with a kitsch kaleidoscope of colossal plaster superheroes, including Rambo, straddling spaceships and fluffy stucco clouds.