Four days in Yogyakarta: the only province in Indonesia a sultan still governs

Three nights in Jogja, a full day for each of the two great temple fields, and the palace, the water castle and the silver quarter around them.

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Length
4 days, 3 nights
Where you stay
Yogyakarta
Places
10 across 4 days
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Yogyakarta is the one province in Indonesia whose governor is a hereditary sultan. The Hamengkubuwono line has held this corner of Java since 1749, and when the republic was fighting for its life the sultan handed his city over as its capital, which is why the province keeps a special status nobody else has.

That is the reason the city feels older than its size. A walled palace sits in the middle of it with a working court, gamelan players and all, and half a million people live around the walls. Two of the greatest religious monuments in Asia stand within an hour's drive, one Buddhist and one Hindu, built within a century of each other by rival dynasties on the same plain.

Jogja itself, as everyone calls it, is loud, cheap, full of students and very easy to like. Traffic is the one real complaint: pavements come and go, and crossing a road is a negotiation. Give the temples the early mornings and the city the rest.

Highlights

  • The sultan's kraton, still lived in, with free gamelan and dance most mornings
  • Tunnels, bathing pools and an underground mosque at the water castle
  • Borobudur at opening time, and the two smaller temples on the line running back to it
  • The Trimurti towers at Prambanan, and Candi Sewu quiet a kilometre north of them
  • Sunset over the plain from the ruined hilltop palace at Ratu Boko

Where to stay

Yogyakarta, three nights

Stay either around the kraton, in the lanes of Prawirotaman south of it, or within reach of Malioboro if you want to be able to walk to the station. The old royal quarter is where the sights are, Prawirotaman is where the quieter guesthouses are, and neither is more than fifteen minutes from the other.

The city takes its name from Ayodhya, Rama's capital in the Ramayana, and the Hindu epics run through everything here, from the reliefs at Prambanan to the shadow puppets in the museum courtyard.

Day by day

Day 1 in Yogyakarta

The kraton, gudeg for lunch and the water castle

The palace opens early and closes not long after midday, so it goes first whatever time your train got in. Entry to the residence is separate from the main court, and both are worth it; if there is a gamelan playing in the pavilion by the entrance, sit down and let it run.

Lunch is gudeg, the dish Jogja is known for: young jackfruit stewed for hours in palm sugar and coconut milk until it goes brown and sweet, served with rice, egg and a fierce chilli-and-cowskin side. Then ten minutes west to the water castle, where the interesting part is not the bathing pools but the passages behind them.

  1. 09:15

    Kraton Yogyakarta

    Other

    The sultan's court, still in use, with a pavilion of gamelan instruments, the royal carriages and cases of court dress; free music and dance are staged most mornings and the schedule is posted at the ticket desk.

  2. 12:30

    Gudeg Wijilan Yu Djum

    Other

    Gudeg in the Wijilan lane east of the palace square, the richer version with a thick sauce, eaten with rice and a boiled egg off a banana leaf.

  3. 14:30

    Water Castle

    Nature

    A pleasure garden built for the first sultan in 1765, with a tower over the harem's bathing pool and, out the back through the old water gate, a network of tunnels and interlacing stairs around a sunken mosque.

With more time: The kampung around the water castle is full of batik workshops where you can watch the wax being drawn, and they are far better value than anything sold on Malioboro. In the evening, walk the length of Malioboro to the monument at the top and eat at one of the angkringan carts under it: rice packets the size of a fist, and coffee with a lump of glowing charcoal dropped into the glass.

Day 2 in Yogyakarta

Borobudur, Candi Pawon and Candi Mendut

Leave at six. Borobudur is an hour and a half west, the site opens early, and the difference between arriving at opening and arriving at ten is the difference between a monument and a queue. The haze usually lifts off the Kedu plain by mid morning and Merapi appears on the skyline behind you.

Nine platforms of dark andesite, six square and three round, carry more than two and a half thousand relief panels: the lower galleries tell the story of the Buddha and the law of karma, and you are meant to walk each level clockwise before climbing. At the top, seventy-two Buddhas sit inside perforated stupas around one great bell.

Coming back, the road passes two smaller temples that were built to line up with the great one. Both take twenty minutes and almost nobody stops at either.

  1. 06:40

    Borobudur

    Religious

    Six square platforms and three circular ones, 2,672 relief panels, 504 Buddhas and a 118 metre base, all in grey volcanic stone and all of it meant to be walked clockwise from the bottom.

  2. 10:30

    Candi Pawon

    Other

    A small, richly carved temple two kilometres down the road, sitting exactly on the line between Borobudur and Mendut; twenty minutes and you have it to yourself.

  3. 11:30

    Candi Mendut

    Religious

    The waypoint temple on the old approach road, restored from 1897 and the first ancient monument in the country to be put back together; inside are three of the finest stone Buddhas on Java.

  4. 15:00

    Late lunch back in Jogja

    Eat

    The drive back takes an hour and a half, which puts you in town around three; the noodle and satay stalls in the streets off Malioboro run all afternoon.

With more time: There are two museums inside the Borobudur grounds, one on the restoration and the hidden carvings around the base, the other built around a full-size reconstruction of an eighth-century Javanese ocean-going ship. Both are included in the ticket and both are usually empty. If you want the classic mist-and-sunrise photograph, it is taken from a hill west of the river rather than from the monument itself, and needs a four in the morning start.

Day 3 in Yogyakarta

Prambanan, Candi Sewu and sunset at Ratu Boko

East today, and a later start, because the point of the Prambanan plain is the end of the afternoon. The main compound is Hindu, built by the Sanjaya kings in the ninth century while their Buddhist neighbours were finishing Borobudur, and the two styles stare at each other across thirty-odd kilometres of rice.

Six temples remain standing in the central court out of the couple of hundred that once filled it. The tallest is Shiva's, and the relief panels running around its terrace tell the Ramayana in stone, which is the same story you will see danced if you come back after dark.

A kilometre north, inside the same park, a Buddhist complex sits almost empty of visitors. Then south, up the ridge, for the sunset.

  1. 10:00

    Candi Prambanan

    Religious

    Six tall, sharply carved towers in a walled court, the Trimurti trio of Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma at the centre, with the Ramayana carved in panels around the terrace of the largest.

  2. 13:00

    Candi Sewu

    Historic

    A Buddhist complex a kilometre north of the gate whose name means a thousand temples and which actually holds 249; the central shrine is restored, the niches are empty and the stupas are pure Borobudur.

  3. 14:15

    Lunch at the park gate

    Eat

    Warungs cluster outside both entrances; eat here rather than driving back into the city, because the hill is fifteen minutes away and you want to be up it well before the light goes.

  4. 16:30

    Kraton Ratu Boko

    Historic

    Gate foundations, bathing pools and a paved terrace on a ridge above the plain, sold as a palace and probably a monastery; go for the view west, with Prambanan's towers small on the flat and the sun dropping behind Merapi.

With more time: The Ramayana ballet is danced in an open-air theatre inside the Prambanan park on dry-season evenings, with a gamelan orchestra and a cast in the low hundreds, moving indoors when it rains. Book through a hotel or agent in town during the day. There are half a dozen more temples scattered across the plain, including a hilltop Hindu one southeast of the ridge that most drivers will add for very little.

Day 4 in Yogyakarta

Javanese court art, then the silver workshops at Kotagede

A last morning in town. The state museum sits on the north side of the palace square and holds a deep collection of Javanese court art: wayang puppets by the hundred, masks, krisses, a complete gamelan and textiles from all over the island.

Then southeast to Kotagede, which was the capital of the Mataram kingdom long before Yogyakarta existed and is now a quiet grid of old walled houses, a royal graveyard and silversmiths who will let you watch them work.

  1. 09:00

    Sonobudoyo Museum

    Culture

    Shadow puppets, masks, weapons and a full gamelan set in a Javanese pavilion by the palace square, labelled in English as well as Indonesian; puppet performances are staged here in the evening, so check the current nights.

  2. 11:00

    Kotagede

    Other

    The first Mataram capital, now a neighbourhood of high-walled Javanese houses around the tomb of Panembahan Senopati, with silver workshops on the main street, most of them happy to let you look over the bench before you buy.

With more time: If your flight is late, the Dutch fort opposite the presidential palace is ten minutes from the museum and gives the colonial half of the story, and the great mosque just west of the alun-alun is the sultan's own, open to visitors outside prayer times.

Before you go

Getting in and getting around

Almost everything now flies into Yogyakarta International Airport, an hour west of the city on the coast. The airport train reaches Tugu station in the middle of town in about forty minutes and runs roughly hourly; Damri buses are cheaper and slower. Trains are the better way in from anywhere else on Java, and Tugu puts you a ten-minute walk from Malioboro.

In town, TransJogja buses run on fixed routes from early morning to about half past nine at night for a few thousand rupiah a ride, and ride-hailing apps cover everything else for not much more. For Borobudur and Prambanan, hire a car with a driver for the day: both are out on separate roads, the temples in each group are spread over several kilometres, and public buses will cost you the morning.

Tickets for the two big sites

Borobudur and Prambanan are run by the same park authority and sell a combined ticket that saves a little over buying separately. Ratu Boko is charged on its own, and there is a Prambanan and Ratu Boko combination worth taking if you want the sunset.

Climbing onto Borobudur's upper terraces has been capped in recent years and needs a timed slot, a guide and the sandals they issue, all of which is arranged when you buy rather than at the foot of the stairs, so sort it out in advance. Foreign visitors pay several times the Indonesian price at every site here, which is normal across Java and not worth arguing about at the window.

Around the palace, and the batik approach

Anyone who greets you in English on Malioboro or outside the kraton and then mentions a government batik exhibition closing today is running the city's most durable scam. It ends in a gallery paying commission on whatever you buy. The polite version of no works fine.

The palace and the bathing garden keep short hours, usually closing in the early afternoon, and the court shuts on some ceremony days at no notice. Go in the morning and keep the museums for later.

Yogyakarta rewards early alarms. The temples belong to whoever gets there at opening, the palace closes by lunchtime, and the afternoons are for gudeg, batik and sitting still while it rains.

Four days gives both of the great sites a whole morning each and still leaves time for the city that grew up between them, which is the part most people skip and then wish they had not.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Can I see Borobudur and Prambanan in one day?
You can, and drivers will offer it, but they lie on opposite sides of the city and you will spend four hours in the car to give each temple ninety minutes in the heat of the day. Splitting them over two days costs one extra night and turns both into mornings rather than errands.
Is the Borobudur sunrise ticket worth it?
Only if the weather cooperates, and in the wet season it often does not. The paid sunrise from inside the grounds means a start well before four; the same view of mist and stupas is taken from a hill west of the river for a fraction of the price. Opening time on an ordinary ticket is quiet enough for most people.
How many days do you need in Yogyakarta?
Four is the comfortable number: a day for each temple field and two half days for the palace quarter. Three works if you skip Ratu Boko. With five or six you could add the volcano country north of the city or the cave and beach country in the hills to the southeast.
Do I need a guide at the temples?
At Prambanan and Borobudur the reliefs are worth having explained, and guides wait at both gates for an hourly rate. At Ratu Boko there is little signage, guides are hit and miss, and you are mostly there for the view anyway.
Can I change the days around once I have saved it?
Yes. Everything here is editable once it is in your own trip, so swapping the museum morning for a batik course or moving Prambanan to the first day takes a moment.