Borobudur temple history: who built the largest Buddhist monument, how it works as a mountain of stone, why it was abandoned and how it was saved

Architecture · 4 September 2026

Borobudur is the largest Buddhist monument in the world, a stepped pyramid of about two million blocks of volcanic stone on the Kedu plain of central Java, Indonesia, built around 780–830 by the Sailendra dynasty and abandoned within two or three centuries when the island's courts moved east and turned to Hinduism and then Islam; it lay under volcanic ash and forest until the British governor Thomas Stamford Raffles had it cleared in 1814, and was rebuilt block by block by Indonesia and UNESCO between 1975 and 1983. It is not a temple with rooms but a mountain to be climbed: nine terraces, six square and three round, carrying 2,672 carved relief panels and 504 statues of the Buddha, arranged so that a pilgrim walking clockwise around each level passes from the world of desire through the world of forms to the formless world at the summit, under a great central stupa. Below: who built it and why, how it is built, what the terraces mean, why it was lost, how it was found and saved, the numbers, and the open questions, with its neighbours Prambanan and Angkor in the Ancient temples of the world collection.

Who built it: the Sailendras

In the 8th century central Java was ruled by two dynasties, the Buddhist Sailendras, "lords of the mountain", and the Hindu Sanjayas, related by marriage and rivals; the Sailendras, who also had ties to the maritime empire of Srivijaya on Sumatra, built Buddhist temples across the Kedu plain, and Borobudur is the greatest. There is no founding inscription, and the dates come from the style of the reliefs and inscriptions carved on hidden panels at the base, which use a script of about 780–830; the king is usually named as Samaratungga, and the monument was perhaps finished under his daughter Pramodhawardhani, who married the Sanjaya prince Rakai Pikatan, whose family built the Hindu Prambanan 30 km away a generation later, in a rivalry of religions in stone. The name Borobudur is first recorded by Raffles and probably means "the monastery of Budur", a nearby village, or "mountain of accumulated virtue"; a charter of 842 mentions a "Bhumisambhara", a mountain of merit. The design is in the Gupta tradition of India carried to Java by monks and traders, but there is nothing like it in India: it is the stupa and the mandala and the terraced mountain sanctuary of the Javanese, whose ancestors had built stepped platforms on hills for a thousand years, in one building. Borobudur.

How it was built

• The hill. The monument sits on a natural hill, cut and built up so that the stone is a shell about 5 to 10 m thick over an earth core, which is why it has survived twelve centuries of earthquakes and why water inside it has been the enduring problem.
• The stone. About 55,000 cubic metres of grey andesite, a volcanic rock, quarried from river beds nearby, cut into blocks of about 25 cm and fitted without mortar using knobs, indentations and dovetails, so the walls flex; the reliefs were carved after the blocks were in place.
• The plan. A square base 123 m on each side, five square terraces with galleries between walls, three round terraces open to the sky, and a central stupa, 35 m above the ground; stairways on all four sides climb through arched gates guarded by monster heads (kala) to the top.
• The hidden foot. The original base was encased in a second wall early in construction, hiding 160 relief panels showing the law of karma, either because the base was unstable and needed a buttress or because the panels were too explicit; the panels were uncovered and photographed in 1890 and a corner is left exposed.
• Drainage. A hundred gargoyle spouts carved as makara monsters drain the terraces; they were never enough for a monsoon climate, and water seeping into the earth core is what pushed the walls outward.
• Time and labour. Estimates run from 50 to 75 years with a workforce of thousands under a master builder the Javanese tradition names Gunadharma, who is said to lie in the shape of the Menoreh hills to the south.

The three worlds and the reliefs

The monument is a three-dimensional map of the Buddhist cosmos, and to climb it is to make the journey. The base, Kamadhatu, the world of desire, carries the hidden panels of karma, showing deeds and their consequences. The five square terraces, Rupadhatu, the world of forms, carry 1,300 narrative panels in galleries whose high walls hide the view: on the first, the life of the Buddha from his descent from heaven to the first sermon, in 120 panels after the Lalitavistara, and the Jataka tales of his previous lives; on the upper galleries, the pilgrimage of the youth Sudhana in search of enlightenment through 460 panels of the Gandavyuha Sutra, in which he visits 53 teachers. The reliefs are the fullest picture of 9th-century Java that exists, with its ships, houses, farming, music, dress and animals, and a ship carved on one panel was rebuilt in 2003 and sailed to Ghana. In niches above the galleries sit 432 Buddhas, their hand gestures changing by direction, east, south, west, north and centre. The three round terraces, Arupadhatu, the formless world, are bare: 72 bell-shaped stupas of stone lattice, each with a Buddha visible through the holes, half-hidden, and the great closed stupa at the centre, which was found empty, or perhaps to hold an unfinished Buddha now in the museum. The pilgrim walks clockwise, keeping the monument on the right, about 5 km in all to the top.

Abandonment and rediscovery

By the 10th century the courts of Java had moved to the east of the island, for reasons debated, an eruption of Merapi, the volcano 28 km away, or war or the shift of trade, and Borobudur was left; by the 15th century Java was Muslim, and the monument was a hill in the forest under ash and vegetation, known to villagers as a place of bad luck, into which, a Javanese chronicle says, a rebel prince fled in 1709 and a crown prince who went to see "the knight in the cage" in 1757 died. In 1814 Raffles, governing Java for Britain during the Napoleonic wars, heard of it, sent the Dutch engineer H.C. Cornelius with 200 men, and in two months the hill was cleared enough to see the monument; Raffles's "History of Java" of 1817 made it known. Through the 19th century it was a quarry and a picnic spot, its Buddha heads stolen for collections, and the King of Siam took eight cartloads of sculpture in 1896; a Dutch commission in 1900 found it about to collapse, and the engineer Theodoor van Erp in 1907–11 rebuilt the upper terraces and the stupas and stopped the worst of the decay, though he could not fix the drainage.

The rescue, 1975–1983

By the 1960s the square terraces were bulging and cracking, the reliefs were being eaten by moss and salts, and the walls leaned; in 1968 Indonesia asked for help, and UNESCO's campaign, the largest restoration ever attempted, dismantled the five square terraces block by block, more than a million stones, each numbered, photographed, cleaned and treated, laid a new concrete foundation with drainage layers and filters inside the hill, and put every stone back, between 1975 and 1983, with 600 workers and 25 million dollars from 27 countries. The monument was reopened by President Suharto in February 1983 and listed by UNESCO in 1991. In January 1985 nine bombs planted by Islamist militants destroyed nine stupas on the upper terraces, rebuilt within a year. Merapi's eruption of October 2010 buried the monument in 2.5 cm of acid ash, which was cleaned off by hand over a year. The stone is now watched for the wear of visitors' feet, and since 2023 climbing the terraces requires a separate limited ticket and sandals provided at the entrance.

The numbers and visiting

• Size. 123 by 123 m at the base, 35 m high; about 2 million blocks, 55,000 cubic metres.
• Sculpture. 2,672 relief panels, 1,460 of them narrative, over 2.5 km if laid end to end; 504 Buddha statues, of which 300 are damaged and 43 headless; 72 latticed stupas and one central.
• Dates. Built about 780–830; abandoned about 1000; cleared 1814; restored 1907–11 and 1975–83.
• Visitors. About 4 million a year, most of them Indonesian; foreigners around 300,000.
• Visiting. Borobudur is 40 km north-west of Yogyakarta, an hour by road; sunrise from the terraces, booked through the Manohara hotel, or from Setumbu hill across the valley, is the classic view, with Merapi steaming in the distance; the terraces are open on a timed ticket with a guide and a daily cap; the Karmawibhangga museum shows the hidden foot's photographs and the ship. Prambanan, the Hindu answer, is a half-day on the other side of Yogyakarta, and the two are a two-day trip; the full moon of Vesak in May brings thousands of Buddhist pilgrims and lanterns.

Versions and theories

• Was it a lake? The Dutch artist Nieuwenkamp proposed in 1931 that the Kedu plain was a lake and Borobudur a lotus floating on it; geologists found lake sediments nearby but not at the required date. Attractive, unproven.
• Why was the foot hidden? Engineers say the base began to slide and needed the encasing wall; art historians note the karma panels were left half-carved when covered, which fits a hurried structural fix. Probably both.
• Was the central stupa empty? Van Erp found it broken into and empty in 1907; a story says it held an "unfinished Buddha", a rough statue found nearby and now in the museum, deliberately left incomplete to represent the formless; some think the statue was simply rejected. Unknown.
• The Merapi eruption drove the people away. An eruption around 1006 is recorded, and the shift of the court to east Java happened about then; whether ash or politics or trade moved them is still argued.
• The Buddha heads. Dozens are in museums from Amsterdam to Bangkok, taken in the 19th century; Indonesia has asked for some back, and a few have returned.
• Gunadharma the architect. A name from Javanese folklore with no inscription behind it; the outline of the hills to the south, seen from the terraces, is said to be his sleeping profile.

The monument's Hindu neighbour and its Khmer descendant are in Angkor Wat facts; the oldest sanctuaries anywhere in the oldest temples in the world.

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