Candi Pawon

7.6047°S, 110.2158°E.

Candi Pawon in central Java, Indonesia — a small ninth-century Buddhist temple located along the processional axis between Borobudur and Candi Mendut, all three monuments built by the same Sailendra dynasty during the same construction programme between approximately the eighth and ninth centuries CE. Original base 10 by 10 metres; original height 13 metres in a single small stupa-form Buddhist temple of dressed andesite blocks. The temple sits exactly on the straight-line axis connecting Borobudur (1.7 kilometres west) with Candi Mendut (1.15 kilometres east) — the alignment is precise to within metres across more than 2.5 kilometres of intervening landscape and constitutes one of the most carefully laid-out religious processional axes documented in Southeast Asia. Pilgrimage traditions preserved into the modern period record that worshippers approached Borobudur in stages by visiting Mendut first, then Pawon, then ascending Borobudur as the climax of the pilgrimage. Excavated and restored by Dutch missions in the early twentieth century.

A small Buddhist temple precisely on the axis between two larger ninth-century Javanese monuments, in a three-temple alignment built as a single coordinated pilgrimage installation.