Gua Sunyaragi

Taman Sari Gua Sunyaragi was built by the Cirebon sultanate, developed through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as a taman sari - a royal water garden - and it is unlike anything else in Java: a complex of artificial caves, chambers, tunnels and pinnacles built up out of coral rock and stone, with narrow passages, low doorways and rooms named for their functions, set among what were once pools. Water was circulated through the structure to cool it and to fall over the rockwork; the system no longer runs and the pools are dry, which changes the whole effect. The name is read as sunya, solitude, and ragi, body - a place for meditation and for the withdrawal of the court, and some chambers were used for that specifically. Restoration has been continuous and not always sympathetic.

What you actually see

• Artificial coral-rock caves - chambers, tunnels and pinnacles built up as landscape.
• A dry water garden - the pools and circulation system no longer running.
• Meditation chambers - the rooms the complex was partly built for.
• Low passages and doorways - the deliberately constricted route through.

When to go

May to September; mornings before the heat. Half a day.

Honest expectations

The water is gone, which removes much of what the garden was for. Restoration work has altered fabric. Guides are insistent and their accounts vary. It is hot and enclosed.

Nearby

The Kasepuhan and Kanoman palaces are in central Cirebon.