The Most Beautiful Sacred Places in Indonesia
9 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful sacred places in Indonesia are Prambanan Temple, Tanah Lot and Borobudur Temple. The list covers 9 sacred places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Between the eighth and tenth centuries, the kingdoms of Central Java built some of the largest Hindu and Buddhist monuments in Asia, carving volcanic andesite into terraces, towers and miles of relief. Islam later became the faith of most of the archipelago, but Bali kept its Hindu traditions, and its temples are tied to the island's geography: to its volcanoes, its crater lakes and the edge of the sea.
Borobudur is the largest Buddhist temple in the world, a stepped mountain of stone whose galleries carry thousands of relief panels and whose upper terraces hold seventy-two perforated stupas, each sheltering a seated Buddha. A short distance away, Prambanan answers with tall, pointed Hindu shrines to Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma, decorated with scenes from the Ramayana. On the slopes of Mount Lawu, Candi Sukuh, from the last Hindu era of Java, takes the unusual form of a truncated pyramid.
On Bali, Besakih spreads up the flank of Mount Agung as the island's mother temple, and Pura Lempuyang Luhur frames the same volcano through its split gate. Tanah Lot stands on a rock in the surf that becomes an island at high tide, Uluwatu Temple sits on a cliff high above the Indian Ocean, and Pura Ulun Danu Bratan appears to float on a mountain lake. In Banda Aceh, the black domes of the Baiturrahman Grand Mosque survived the 2004 tsunami.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Prambanan Temple | Archaeological site | ✓ |
| 2 | Tanah Lot | Temple | |
| 3 | Borobudur Temple | Stupa | ✓ |
| 4 | Besakih | Temple | |
| 5 | Pura Ulun Danu Bratan | Temple | |
| 6 | Baiturrahman Grand Mosque | Mosque | |
| 7 | Uluwatu Temple | Temple | |
| 8 | Pura Lempuyang Luhur | Temple | |
| 9 | Sukuh | Temple |
01 Prambanan Temple
Indonesia · 13.2 km from Yogyakarta City7.752° S 110.491° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Gunawan Kartapranata · CC BY-SA 3.0 That's folklore, not archaeology, but it did real historical work: the association of the ruins with a cursed, vengeful princess made pre-colonial Javanese communities wary of the site, which is part of why a temple complex this large sat neglected for so long before serious excavation and restoration began.
Did you know? A short red-painted inscription reading 'pikatan' on a finial of the Shiva temple helped confirm King Rakai Pikatan as the founder of the complex.
02 Tanah Lot
Indonesia · 14.9 km from Denpasar8.621° S 115.087° E
Jakub Hałun · CC BY-SA 4.0 The temple's guardian isn't only mythical. Nirartha is said to have created a venomous sea snake from his own scarf to protect the shrine, and a real snake — a banded, black-and-white species related to kraits — is kept in a small grotto at the site to this day, tended by a caretaker who lets visitors have it draped briefly over their hands as a blessing.
Did you know? About 300 metres north of the main temple, along the same stretch of coast, stands a second shrine called Pura Batu Bolong.
03 Borobudur Temple
Indonesia · 15.5 km from Magelang7.608° S 110.204° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Justine Hong · CC BY 2.0 And then it disappeared. As Hindu-Buddhist power in Java faded and Islam spread through the archipelago from the 14th century on, the temple was abandoned, and ash from eruptions of nearby Mount Merapi combined with jungle growth to bury it almost entirely. It survived in local memory mostly as rumour rather than a place anyone visited.
Did you know? Stormwater drains through 100 spouts at the corners of the terraces, each carved as a different giant or makara sea monster.
04 Besakih
Indonesia · 39.8 km from Denpasar8.374° S 115.452° E
Image by MariaHZ from Pixabay Besakih is not a single building but a family of 23 related temples spread over the slope. At its heart is Pura Penataran Agung, laid out on six terraces that climb the hillside. Visitors pass first through a candi bentar, the split gateway typical of Balinese temples, and then through the taller Kori Agung, the inner gate.
Did you know? The officially designated sacred zone counts 26 temples, Pura Penataran Agung plus 25 surrounding sanctuaries, slightly more than the 23 usually quoted.
05 Pura Ulun Danu Bratan
Indonesia · 18.9 km from Singaraja8.271° S 115.167° E
Image by DEZALB from Pixabay The temple is dedicated to Dewi Danu, goddess of the waters, lakes and rivers, and its purpose is deeply practical as well as spiritual. The lake is the source of water for the farmland of the whole region below it, and downstream stand many smaller water temples, each belonging to a local irrigation association.
Did you know? The complex has five shrines to different Hindu deities, arranged according to designs set out in ancient palm-leaf lontar manuscripts.
06 Baiturrahman Grand Mosque
Indonesia · 0.5 km from Banda Aceh5.554° N 95.317° E
Image by ZULMAHDI from Pixabay A royal mosque has stood here since at least the reign of Sultan Iskandar Muda, who is said to have built one in 1612; some accounts place the first mosque as early as 1292. That building had the multi-tiered thatched roof typical of Acehnese architecture. In April 1873, during the first Dutch expedition against the Sultanate of Aceh, Acehnese fighters used the mosque as a stronghold, and it burned when flares set the thatch alight.
Did you know? An Eid al-Adha procession in Aceh was sketched in 1637 by the English traveller Peter Mundy, one of the earliest images linked to the old royal mosque.
07 Uluwatu Temple
Indonesia · 16.7 km from Denpasar8.829° S 115.084° E
Image by moritzklassen from Pixabay Balinese tradition gives the sanctuary a long pedigree. A small shrine is believed to have existed first; the Javanese priest Mpu Kuturan is credited with enlarging it in the 11th century, and the sage Dang Hyang Nirartha, who came from East Java around the turn of the 16th century, with adding the padmasana shrines — thrones left empty for the supreme god.
Did you know? A small grove in front of the temple, the alas kekeran, is kept as a buffer protecting the sanctuary's holiness.
08 Pura Lempuyang Luhur
Indonesia8.391° S 115.631° E
Flickr user: yeowatzup https://www.flickr.com/photos/yeowatzup/ · CC BY 2.0 The way up is the point. The path begins at Pura Penataran Agung Lempuyang, the lowest major temple of the group, with its white split gate, three dragon-flanked stairways and the famous view framing the cone of Mount Agung across the valley, and continues past Telaga Mas, Telaga Sawangan, Lempuyang Madya, Puncak Bisbis and Pasar Agung.
Did you know? According to legend, the god Pasupati carried part of the cosmic Mount Semeru to Bali and set the deity Hyang Gni Jaya on Lempuyang to guard the east.
09 Sukuh
Indonesia · 34.5 km from Surakarta7.627° S 111.131° E
Anton Leddin · CC BY-SA 3.0 Sukuh dates from the fifteenth century, the final phase of the Hindu-Buddhist Majapahit kingdom. A chronogram on the western gate gives a date equivalent to 1437, which is generally read as its consecration, and an inscription on a large lingga gives a date corresponding to 1440.
Did you know? The flat-backed stone tortoises all face west and recall Kurma, the tortoise avatar of Vishnu who carried the world on his shell.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful sacred places in Indonesia?
- On our list, Prambanan Temple ranks first, followed by Tanah Lot and Borobudur Temple.
- Is Borobudur Hindu or Buddhist?
- Borobudur is a Mahayana Buddhist monument, built in the eighth and ninth centuries under the Sailendra dynasty. The great Hindu temple complex of Prambanan, built not long after, stands nearby in the same region of Central Java.
- What is Besakih Temple?
- Besakih, on the slopes of Mount Agung, is the largest and holiest temple complex of Balinese Hinduism and is known as the mother temple of Bali. It is made up of more than twenty separate temples arranged up the mountainside.
- How many sacred places are on this list in Indonesia?
- The list covers 9 sacred places.