Bali is a province of Indonesia and the
westernmost of the Lesser Sunda Islands.
East of Java and west of Lombok, the
province includes the island of Bali and a
few smaller offshore islands, notably Nusa
Penida, Nusa Lembongan, and Nusa Ceningan to
the southeast. The provincial capital,
Denpasar, is the most populous city in the
Lesser Sunda Islands and the second-largest,
after Makassar, in Eastern Indonesia.
Denpasar metropolitan area is the extended
metropolitan area around Denpasar. The
upland town of Ubud in Greater Denpasar is
considered Bali's cultural centre. The
province is Indonesia's main tourist
destination, with a significant rise in
tourism since the 1980s, and becoming an
Indonesian area of overtourism.
Tourism-related business makes up 80% of the
Bali economy.
Bali is the only Hindu-majority province in
Indonesia, with 86.9% of the population
adhering to Balinese Hinduism. It is
renowned for its highly developed arts,
including traditional and modern dance,
sculpture, painting, leather, metalworking,
and music. The Indonesian International Film
Festival is held every year in Bali. Other
international events that have been held in
Bali include Miss World 2013, the 2018
Annual Meetings of the International
Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group and
the 2022 G20 summit. In March 2017,
TripAdvisor named Bali as the world's top
destination in its Traveller's Choice award,
which it also earned in January 2021.
Bali is part of the Coral Triangle, the area
with the highest biodiversity of marine
species, especially fish and turtles. In
this area alone, over 500 reef-building
coral species can be found. For comparison,
this is about seven times as many as in the
entire Caribbean. Bali is the home of the
Subak irrigation system, a UNESCO World
Heritage Site. It is also home to a unified
confederation of kingdoms composed of 10
traditional royal Balinese houses, each
house ruling a specific geographic area. The
confederation is the successor of the Bali
Kingdom. The royal houses, which originated
before Dutch colonisation, are not
recognised by the government of Indonesia.