Izzy Travel Notes

Another beautiful site to visit in Central Java / Jogjakarta area.

This archaeological site lies on a small plateau about 196 meter above the sea level. The remains cover the areas of two villages, Dawung and Sambirejo, belong to Yogyakarta Special Territory Province, about 3 km to the south of Prambanan Temples.

And finally I got the chance to visit this site during my last vacation. Accompanied by an officer from Dinas Purbakala (Archaeological Service) of Central Java, I walked this site…

We can divide this 12 hectare site into 3 areas. The first area consists of the impressive gateways (so impressive that these gates attract so many people to make picture of them, including myself :D), the Whitestone temple (candi Batu Putih) and Incineration temple (candi Pembakaran) that used to be used for crematorium purpose in the past.

The second area consists of group of Paseban, base of Pendopo, base of Pringgitan, group of pools and base of Keputren, spread in a large area. The group of Paseban is located at a big square area that is believed was an ‘Alun-alun’, separated from the other ruins of buildings in this group by a big thick wall (well, at least there was a wall as currently it is only the south part of the Alun-alun wall that is still exist) that has 5 gates. The ruin of the Pendopo is still quite massive and we can still imagine how was the layout of the building back then. A set of miniature temples are located in the Pendopo area, representing Siwa, Brahma and Wisnu. The pool complex is separate into groups and each group containing few pools (I cannot remember how many pools each group, sorry…). Two of those pools never dry out even during the dry season where normally will dry out the other pools in the complex.

The third area is called the cave complex. It’s a group of man-made caves and it looks like they were made for praying purpose, as there is also a holy water well located in the complex where the prayer would have taken the holy water from for their praying purpose.

So many versions of Ratu Boko story are out there. But unlike Borobudur and Prambanan, the story of Boko remains a mystery as there were not much ancient documents that explain about this beautiful site…

* Other photos of Ratu Boko trip can be found at:

http://www.ismawanismail.com/gallery/index.php?/category/ratu-boko