Nestled in what was once the heart of the Javanese empire, Jago Temple stands in Tumpang village, just 22 km east of Malang City. Its ruins transport visitors back to the era of the Majapahit Empire, a Hindu-Buddhist kingdom that stretched across much of today's Indonesian archipelago between the 13th and 16th centuries. Conceived as a terraced sanctuary rising on a stepped stone base, the temple has lost its upper structure, leaving the platforms and their carved surfaces exposed to view. Those surfaces are its distinction: bands of narrative relief cut in the flat, angular manner of Javanese shadow-puppet theatre, unfolding episodes from Hindu and Buddhist story cycles around the walls of the monument.
