Photo Gallery

The Borobudur Temple, the largest Buddhist temple ever built, rises northwest of the city of Yogyakarta in Central Java. With its countless bell-shaped stupas and Buddha statues, the complex is one of the finest examples of sacred architecture in South Asia. – 1990

The bas-reliefs on the terrace walls of Borobudur are of incomparable beauty. All the faces radiate a serene happiness. The presence of such a Buddhist sanctuary in an archipelago that is now almost exclusively Islamic may come as a surprise. However, it is important to note that from the 8th century onwards, Indian peoples migrated to Southeast Asia in waves, bringing with them elements of an important Hindu-Buddhist high culture. Three bas-reliefs in Borobudur depict sailing ships that undoubtedly correspond to those that transported spices as early as the 1st millennium. – 1990

Three bas-reliefs in Borobudur depict sailing ships that undoubtedly correspond to those that transported spices as early as the 1st millennium. – 1990

Three bas-reliefs in Borobudur depict sailing ships that undoubtedly correspond to those that transported spices as early as the 1st millennium. – 1990

The bas-reliefs on the terrace walls of Borobudur are of incomparable beauty. All the faces radiate a serene happiness. The presence of such a Buddhist sanctuary in an archipelago that is now almost exclusively Islamic may come as a surprise. However, it is important to note that from the 8th century onwards, Indian peoples migrated to Southeast Asia in waves, bringing with them elements of an important Hindu-Buddhist high culture. – 1990

The bas-reliefs on the terrace walls of Borobudur are of incomparable beauty. All the faces radiate a serene happiness. The presence of such a Buddhist sanctuary in an archipelago that is now almost exclusively Islamic may come as a surprise. However, it is important to note that from the 8th century onwards, Indian peoples migrated to Southeast Asia in waves, bringing with them elements of an important Hindu-Buddhist high culture. – 1990

The bas-reliefs on the terrace walls of Borobudur are of incomparable beauty. All the faces radiate a serene happiness. The presence of such a Buddhist sanctuary in an archipelago that is now almost exclusively Islamic may come as a surprise. However, it is important to note that from the 8th century onwards, Indian peoples migrated to Southeast Asia in waves, bringing with them elements of an important Hindu-Buddhist high culture. – 1990

The Borobudur temple is believed to have been built between 778 and 856, but like the rest of Central Java, it was abandoned just a hundred years after its completion and buried under a mountain of ash for a thousand years following an eruption of the neighbouring Merapi volcano. In 1814, under the English Vice-Governor Thomas Stamford Raffles, the history of the rediscovery of this temple complex began. Borobudur has the shape of a square step pyramid with a base length of 113 metres. Four monumental staircases, aligned with the four points of the compass, lead to the top. Seen from above, the temple is a mandala, an aid to meditation, and as a whole, a stupa or three-dimensional model of the cosmos. The walls of the lower terraces are covered with bas-reliefs depicting the life of Gautama Buddha and his disciples, while the upper steps remain without pictorial decoration. Instead, numerous smaller stupas rise here, towered over by the main stupa, which culminates at a height of thirty-five metres. – 1990

A young woman takes her ducks to a market near the world's largest Buddhist temple complex - 1990