Tag: architecture

 

 

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.

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Q: where would you find the world’s largest Buddhist temple?

A: in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation.

Beautifully sited on a lush plain, between volcanoes, Borobudur is in Central Java,

Java is “our” planet’s most populous island…but is far from its most frantic/frenetic.

My photo was taken at 3.41 pm on 18 October 2024;  the prevailing mood was “a relaxed state of high anticipation”.

A few raindrops gently fell, while we waited for our appointed time to ascend the temple steps.

(visitor numbers – and their access and behaviour – are now strictly regulated. Borobudur’s hitherto “laissez faire” regime had been rapidly destroying what the too-many, too-careless tourists had come to see)

The prevailing mood and the rain’s intensity were about to change…dramatically!

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