Prambanan

Built in the mid-9th century CE, likely begun under King Rakai Pikatan and inaugurated by his successor King Lokapala of the Hindu Sanjaya dynasty of the Mataram Kingdom, Prambanan is the largest Hindu temple complex in Indonesia and one of the largest in Southeast Asia, its central compound dominated by three towering shrines to Shiva, Brahma, and Vishnu. Abandoned around the mid-10th century after the kingdom’s political center shifted, and further damaged by a major 16th-century earthquake, it was documented by Europeans as early as 1733 and restored beginning in the early 20th century (the main Shiva temple’s reconstruction was completed in 1953); it was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1991. Unlike Angkor Wat, some sections still see periodic Hindu ritual use by Indonesia’s Hindu (largely Balinese-descended) minority.