Bandung, also know as City of Flowers, and this city Situated on a plateau in the beautiful Parahayangan mountains, Bandung's pleasant climate and lush surroundings have offered an escape from the heat of the lowlands since the mid 19th century when it was the heart of the region's most prosperous plantation area.The earliest reference to the city dates back to 1488, but archaeological findings suggest a type of Homo erectus species had lived on the banks of the Cikapundung River and around the old lake of Bandung. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Dutch East Indies Company (VOC) opened plantations in the Bandung area. A supply road connecting Batavia (now Jakarta), Bogor, Cianjur, Bandung, Sumedang and Cirebon was built in 1786. In 1809, Louis Napoleon, the ruler of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and its colonies, ordered the Dutch Indies Governor H.W. Daendels to increase the defensive systems of Java against the British from India. Daendels built a road, stretching approximately 1,000 km from the west to the east coast of Java Indonesia, and passing through Bandung.The Bandung city area in 1906 was only 19.22 square kilometres and it has been expanded several times until the 1987 expansion into 167.2965 km².[9] The city administration is divided into 26 subdistricts (kecamatan) and 139 villages (kelurahan). A mayor (walikota) leads the city administration. Since 2005, the city residents directly voted for a mayor, while previously mayors were nominated and selected by the city council members or known as the Regional People's Representative Council (DPRD).Most of Bandung population are of Sundanese descent. Javanese is largest minority, from nearby provinces and eastern part of Java. Notable minorities include Chinese Indonesians, Indian Indonesians, and Korean Indonesians.