Candi Tikus is not a temple in the usual sense but a petirtaan, a bathing and water structure, sunk below the surrounding ground level at Trowulan in East Java. Rediscovered in the twentieth century and excavated, it consists of a rectangular brick basin reached by steps, with a central raised structure, subsidiary basins and a series of spouts through which water once flowed from the surrounding aquifer into the pool. The local name refers to the rats said to have led to its rediscovery. In Javanese court culture, water installations of this type combined the practical, the aesthetic and the sacred: bathing places, symbolic representations of a cosmic mountain and its springs, and demonstrations of a ruler's command over water in an agricultural society. Filmed from above and from within the basin, the programme makes the geometry of the structure legible, follows the surviving channels, and connects Candi Tikus to the wider archaeological landscape of the Majapahit capital that surrounds it.
