Much of what once comprised the Hindu temple site at Prambanan is still in ruins…or no longer present, at all.
For many centuries makers of other structures pillaged building materials from here.
On the afternoon of October 19 2024, we were just a short drive away from Yogyakarta in south-central Java.
Our feet stood on a very large site; also standing upright were 16 carefully restored/reconstructed temples and shrines.
If we had arrived 1,100 years earlier, we would have been surrounded by 240 of them!
The “biggest/tallest/central” 8, however, do all now stand tall again.
In 2024 Prambanan is certainly one of the world’s “jaw dropping” temple sites.
The tallest temple – pictured above – is Shiva’s.
Future, multi-image posts will show and tell much more about Indonesia’s largest Hindu temple site, and its extraordinary history.
On current estimates, ongoing efforts to fully restore/reconstruct/protect it will likely take another two centuries to complete.
That period is a great deal longer than that which encompassed the following…
The temples’ original construction, which began circa 850 CE, and for which the course of the local river was redirected.
Their elevated status as the religious (and populous) hub of a powerful kingdom.
Their reduced status when that kingdom shifted its court to a new capital in East Java, in the 930s.
Their (presumably, sudden) total abandonment, circa 1006.
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A few centuries later, the abandoned temples collapsed during a major 16th CE earthquake.
In the 21st century, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and floods are all ongoing issues, as are “inappropriate development” and “too many/too-careless tourists”
The “development” and “tourist” threats are currently being addressed, actively – not merely by the issuing of “virtue statements”.
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