South Sulawesi in the context of "Central Sulawesi"

Makassar, formerly Ujung Pandang, is the capital of the Indonesian province of South Sulawesi. It is the largest city in the region of Eastern Indonesia and the country's fifth-largest urban center after Jakarta, Surabaya, Medan, and Bandung. The city is located on the southwest coast of the island of Sulawesi, facing the Makassar Strait.

Throughout its history, Makassar has been an important trading port, hosting the center of the Gowa Sultanate and a Portuguese naval base before its conquest by the Dutch East India Company in the 17th century. It remained an important port in the Dutch East Indies, serving Eastern Indonesian regions with Makassarese fishers going as far south as the Australian coast. For a brief period after the proclamation of Indonesian independence in 1946, Makassar was designated the capital of the State of East Indonesia, a Dutch puppet state; however, in 1950, only four years into its existence as an independent state, the Makassar Uprising took place, resulting in the country's integration into the Republic of Indonesia.

The Denpasar metropolitan area or Greater Denpasar, and locally known as Sarbagita; (an acronym of Denpasar–Badung–Gianyar–Tabanan) is a metropolitan area located in Bali, Indonesia. This area includes Denpasar city and its surrounding areas such as Badung Regency, Gianyar Regency, and Tabanan Regency. Sarbagita is the largest metropolitan area in the Lesser Sunda Islands and the second largest in the Eastern Indonesia region after the Makassar metropolitan area in South Sulawesi. It has an area of 1,928.28 km, and at the 2023 estimate had a population of 2,301,887.

Southeast Sulawesi (Indonesian: Sulawesi Tenggara, Indonesian pronunciation: [sulaˌwesi t̪əŋˈɡara]; often abbreviated to Sultra, Indonesian pronunciation: [ˈsʊlt̪ra]), is a province on the island of Sulawesi, forming the southeastern peninsula of that island, together with a number of substantial offshore islands such as Buton, Muna, Kabaena and Wawonii (formerly called Wowoni), together with many smaller islands. It is bordered by South Sulawesi and Central Sulawesi to the north, sharing a maritime border with Maluku and North Maluku to the east and East Nusa Tenggara to the south, as well a very narrow maritime border with East Timor to the south. The capital is the city of Kendari, on the east coast of the peninsula.

The province has no highway road connecting to the rest of the island, and the primary transportation link is a ferry across the Bone Gulf between Watampone (Bone) in South Sulawesi and the port of Kolaka in Southeast Sulawesi.

The caves in the Maros-Pangkep karst or Leang-Leang Caves (from the Makassarese word for "many caves") are located in Maros Regency, South Sulawesi, Indonesia, roughly one hour north of Makassar city. The village of Leang-Leang lies in a limestone karst region densely packed with caves that contain paintings from the Paleolithic considered to be the earliest figurative art in the world, dated to at least 45,500 years ago.

Archaeological excavations have revealed evidence of human presence in several of these caves dating back approximately 5,000 years (circa 3000 BCE), predating the first Austronesian migrations from Taiwan to the Philippines and the broader Indonesian archipelago, which began around 2000 BCE.Among the findings are prehistoric paintings, including red and ochre negative hand stencils. In the Maros cave complex, some of these artworks have been dated to around 40,000 years ago. Similar techniques can be seen at prehistoric sites in Europe, such as the Pech Merle cave in the Lot region of France, dated to around 25,000 years ago.

The South Peninsula is one of the four principal peninsulas on the island of Sulawesi, stretching south from the central part of the island. It is part of the province of South Sulawesi. The southern peninsula is the most densely populated peninsula in Sulawesi; over 45% of the population of Sulawesi (or 8.8 million people) are on the southern peninsula. Inhabited by an Austronesian people who came thousands of years ago. The largest ethnic group in Sulawesi is the Bugis, followed by Makassar and Toraja.

Mount Lompobattang lies near the southern tip of this peninsula. and the latimojong mountain is the highest mountain in the southern peninsula of sulawesi and on the island of sulawesi.

The Buginese (Buginese: To Ugi, Lontara script: ᨈᨚ ᨕᨘᨁᨗ; Indonesian: Orang Bugis), or simply Bugis, are an Austronesian ethnic group who are the most numerous of the three major linguistic and ethnic groups of South Sulawesi (the others being Makassarese and Torajan), in the south-western province of Sulawesi, third-largest island of Indonesia. The Bugis converted from animism to Islam in 1605. A small minority adhere to Christianity and a pre-Islamic indigenous belief called Tolotang.

The Bugis, whose population numbers around six million and constitutes less than 2.5% of the Indonesian population, are influential in the politics of the country, and historically influential on the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Borneo, Lesser Sunda Islands and other parts of the archipelago where they have migrated en masse, starting in the late seventeenth century. The third president of Indonesia, B. J. Habibie, and a former vice president of Indonesia, Jusuf Kalla, are of Bugis descent. In Malaysia, the reigning Yang di-Pertuan Agong (King of Malaysia), Sultan Ibrahim and eighth prime minister, Muhyiddin Yassin, have Bugis ancestry.

The Sultanate of Gowa was one of the great kingdoms in the history of Indonesia and the most successful kingdom in the South Sulawesi region. People of this kingdom come from the Makassarese people who lived in the south end and the west coast of southern Sulawesi.