Prambanan
Eight tapering Hindu towers, three over forty metres, built fifty years after Borobudur.
Duration
2 hrs – 3 hrs
Best time
Late afternoon
Open
Every day
Entry price
To confirm
Prambanan was raised around 850, some fifty years after Borobudur and seventeen kilometres away: a Hindu complex built facing a Buddhist one, by dynasties sharing the same plain. The towers dedicated to Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma stand over a courtyard of two hundred and forty smaller shrines.
The Shiva tower reaches forty-seven metres and its galleries tell the Ramayana in relief. The 2006 earthquake brought down part of the secondary shrines, and the numbered blocks are still waiting to be rebuilt, laid out on the ground all around.
Getting there
Seventeen kilometres east of Yogyakarta, on the Solo road. TransJogja bus line 1A, terminus at the site entrance.
What the price covers
paid entry, with a foreign rate distinct from the Indonesian one; a combined ticket with Borobudur exists
Rules on site
A hard hat is compulsory in the central courtyard on some days, because of blocks that are still unstable: it is provided at the gate and must be worn. No shade between the towers.
