A few hundred metres to the north of the Clock Tower, Fort de Kock (daily 8am-7pm; Rp1500, plus Rp350 for the museum) was built by the Dutch in 1825 and is linked by a footbridge to the park, Taman Bundo Kanduang, on the hill on the other side of Jalan A Yani; there's little left of the original fort but some old cannons and parts of the moats. From here you can see Gunung Merapi, on the left, and the much more dramatic cone-shaped Gunung Singgalang to the right. The park's museum is housed in a traditional rumah gadang, and features clothing, musical instruments, textiles and models of traditional houses. En route you'll pass through the the abysmally inhumane zoo.

Much more pleasant is a trip to Panorama Park (daily 7am-7pm; Rp500), perched on a lip of land overlooking the sheer cliff walls down into Ngarai Sianok Canyon, the best Bukittinggi sight by far. Beneath the park stretch 1400m of Japanese tunnels (Rp500) and rooms built with local slave labour during World War II as a potential fortress. You can venture down into these dank, miserable depths, although there's nothing really to see. The Ngarai Sianok Canyon is part of a rift valley that runs the full length of Sumatra - the canyon here is 15km long and around 100m deep with a glistening river wending its way along the bottom.