The Most Beautiful Temples in Indonesia
8 places ยท updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful temples in Indonesia are Prambanan Temple, Tanah Lot and Borobudur Temple. The list covers 8 temples. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Indonesia's temples come from two great chapters. On Java, Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms of the eighth and ninth centuries cut volcanic andesite into stone monuments of a scale unmatched in the region, then left them to ash and jungle when power moved east. On Bali, Hindu tradition never broke, and the island's pura are still open-air courtyards of split gates, shrines and tiered meru towers, set wherever the island's spirits are felt strongest: on lake shores, sea cliffs and the flanks of volcanoes.
On Java, Borobudur rises as a stepped Buddhist mountain, its galleries lined with carved reliefs and its upper terraces crowned by perforated stupas. Prambanan, a short distance away, answers it with tall, pointed Hindu towers to Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma, their walls carved with the Ramayana. Candi Sukuh, high on Mount Lawu, is something else again: a fifteenth-century truncated pyramid that looks more Mesoamerican than Javanese.
Bali's temples are shaped by their setting. Tanah Lot stands on a rock in the surf, cut off at high tide; Uluwatu clings to a limestone cliff above the Indian Ocean; Pura Ulun Danu Bratan seems to rest on the waters of a mountain lake. Besakih climbs the slope of Mount Agung as the island's mother temple, and the gate of Pura Lempuyang Luhur frames the same volcano in its split.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Prambanan Temple | Archaeological site | โ |
| 2 | Tanah Lot | Temple | |
| 3 | Borobudur Temple | Stupa | โ |
| 4 | Besakih | Temple | |
| 5 | Pura Ulun Danu Bratan | Temple | |
| 6 | Uluwatu Temple | Temple | |
| 7 | Pura Lempuyang Luhur | Temple | |
| 8 | Sukuh | Temple |
01 Prambanan Temple
Indonesia ยท 13.2 km from Yogyakarta City7.752ยฐ S 110.491ยฐ E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Gunawan Kartapranata ยท CC BY-SA 3.0 It's also not a monument frozen safely in the past.
Did you know? Only six of the 224 small shrines have been rebuilt, and since each takes eight to twelve months, finishing them all would take at least two centuries.
02 Tanah Lot
Indonesia ยท 14.9 km from Denpasar8.621ยฐ S 115.087ยฐ E
Jakub Haลun ยท CC BY-SA 4.0 The rock itself has needed real intervention to survive. Centuries of wave action had eroded its base badly enough that by the 1980s engineers judged the outcrop structurally at risk of collapsing into the sea. A Japanese-funded conservation project running into the 1990s replaced a substantial portion of the original stone with matching artificial rock to stabilize the formation โ meaning a meaningful part of what looks like ancient, wave-carved rock today is a late-20th-century engineering repair holding the older structure up.
Did you know? Its temple festival, the odalan, comes round every 210 days on the Balinese Pawukon calendar, falling four days after Kuningan.
03 Borobudur Temple
Indonesia ยท 15.5 km from Magelang7.608ยฐ S 110.204ยฐ E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Justine Hong ยท CC BY 2.0 Its return to the world came down to one report reaching one curious administrator: in 1814, Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles โ the British governor running Java during a brief period of British control โ heard talk of a "mountain of Buddhist sculptures in stone" near the village of Bumisegoro and sent a Dutch engineer, H.C. Cornelius, to check. Cornelius brought 200 men and spent two months hacking away vegetation and ash before the scale of what was underneath became clear; full excavation wasn't finished until 1835.
Did you know? The builders worked in the tala, a unit based on the length of a human face, and a ratio of 4:6:9 recurs throughout the monument.
04 Besakih
Indonesia ยท 39.8 km from Denpasar8.374ยฐ S 115.452ยฐ E
Image by MariaHZ from Pixabay Hindu worship at Besakih is documented from 1284, after settlers from Java arrived, and by the fifteenth century it had become the state temple of the Gelgel dynasty, then the leading kingdom of the island. Its relationship with the volcano has always been close: in 1963 a series of eruptions of Mount Agung killed about 1,700 people, yet the lava flows passed within metres of the complex and left it standing, an escape many Balinese read as a sign of divine favour. Ceremonial life here follows the 210-day Pawukon calendar, and at least seventy festivals are held each year, when the courtyards fill with processions, music and towering offerings of fruit and flowers.
Did you know? At the heart of Pura Penataran Agung stand three lotus thrones, the Padma Tiga, honouring Shiva in three aspects: Shiva, Sada Shiva and Parama Shiva.
05 Pura Ulun Danu Bratan
Indonesia ยท 18.9 km from Singaraja8.271ยฐ S 115.167ยฐ E
Image by DEZALB from Pixabay The heart of the temple is the Lingga Petak shrine by the water, where two meru, pagoda-like towers of stacked roofs, rise side by side, one of eleven tiers and one of three; the number of roofs on a meru reflects the rank of the deity and is always odd. A sacred well here holds the holy water known as Tirta Ulun Danu. Alongside the shrines to Dewi Danu and to the Hindu trinity of Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma, the complex also shelters a Buddhist stupa and a statue of the Buddha, a quiet sign of the long coexistence of the two traditions in Bali. The Bali Botanic Garden lies close by in the same highlands.
Did you know? The 50,000-rupiah note issued in 2005 shows the lake temple on its reverse, complete with a man paddling a canoe.
06 Uluwatu Temple
Indonesia ยท 16.7 km from Denpasar8.829ยฐ S 115.084ยฐ E
Image by moritzklassen from Pixabay The setting is the main show. A cliff-top path runs along the headland with views back to the temple perched on its promontory, best when the late light turns the water silver. The forest around the shrines is home to long-tailed macaques, famous for snatching sunglasses and sandals and โ researchers have found โ for trading them back for food, a learned habit passed down the troop. Every evening a Kecak performance is staged on the cliffside: a ring of men chanting the Ramayana in interlocking rhythms while the sun drops into the sea behind them.
Did you know? The temple's anniversary festival returns every 210 days, following the cycle of the traditional Balinese calendar.
07 Pura Lempuyang Luhur
Indonesia8.391ยฐ S 115.631ยฐ E
Flickr user: yeowatzup https://www.flickr.com/photos/yeowatzup/ ยท CC BY 2.0 The upper sanctuary itself is modest in size, a walled courtyard of shrines and offering pavilions on a forested summit, and that restraint is part of its beauty. What you find there is less a monument than a working holy place, reached on foot like a true pilgrimage. The full climb takes most visitors one and a half to two hours each way; temple dress is expected throughout the complex.
Did you know? The name Lempuyang is usually explained as joining lempu, light, and hyang, God, so the mountain is the place of the divine light.
08 Sukuh
Indonesia ยท 34.5 km from Surakarta7.627ยฐ S 111.131ยฐ E
Anton Leddin ยท CC BY-SA 3.0 The temple lies in the village of Berjo in Karanganyar Regency. Another late terraced sanctuary, Candi Cetho, stands higher up the same mountain.
Did you know? Relief panels tell the Sudamala story, in which Sadewa, youngest of the Pandawa brothers, is tied to a tree and threatened by the wrathful goddess Durga.
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 โ 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 temples in Indonesia?
- On our list, Prambanan Temple ranks first, followed by Tanah Lot and Borobudur Temple.
- What is the largest Buddhist temple in the world?
- Borobudur in Central Java is widely recognised as the largest Buddhist temple in the world. It was built in the ninth century as a stepped monument whose terraces lead pilgrims from carved reliefs up to circular platforms of stupas.
- Is Prambanan a Hindu or a Buddhist temple?
- Prambanan is Hindu. Its main towers are dedicated to the trimurti of Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma, with Shiva's the tallest; the Buddhist Sewu temple stands within the same archaeological park.
- What is the Mother Temple of Bali?
- Pura Besakih, a complex of many temples on the slopes of Mount Agung, is known as the Mother Temple of Bali and is the most important temple of Balinese Hinduism.
- How many temples are on this list in Indonesia?
- The list covers 8 temples.