The story of Borobudur Temple

Climb through the stairways and corridors lined with 1,460 narrative relief panels, and you follow the path that pilgrims were meant to take. Borobudur, a 9th-century Mahayana Buddhist temple northwest of Yogyakarta, is the largest Buddhist temple in the world. Built under the Sailendra dynasty from grey andesite-like stone, it has nine stacked platforms, six square and three circular, topped by a central dome.

That dome is surrounded by 72 Buddha statues, each seated inside a perforated stupa; originally there were 504 Buddha statues in all. The temple was abandoned after the 14th century, and wider knowledge of it began in 1814 through Thomas Stamford Raffles, then the British administrator of Java, who learned of its location from local Indonesians. The largest restoration was completed in 1983 by the Indonesian government and UNESCO.

Borobudur, Pawon and Mendut stand on a straight line from east to west, and every year Buddhists in Indonesia celebrate Vesak here. It is Indonesia's most-visited monument.