YOGYAKARTA (Indonesia): Yogyakarta, rocked on Saturday by a 6.2-magnitude earthquake, is one of Indonesia’s cultural pearls, a centre of fine Javanese arts and temples that bear witness to its rich ethnic and religious history.

It is the only Indonesian province still formally ruled by pre-colonial sultanate and has long been famed for its classical gamelan music, as well as dance, theatre, poetry, silver work and leather shadow puppets.

At the heart of its fame is Borobudur, built in the ninth century and at 34.5 metres high Southeast Asia’s largest Buddhist monument.

Photographs on Saturday showed that, along with most buildings in the city, Borobudur’s massive stone structure, often compared to a lotus flower floating on a lake, had suffered damage when the quake struck, with some of its intricate carvings toppling to the ground.

Borobudur is a Unesco world heritage site, regarded as a wonder of the world and helps Yogyakarta compete with the resort island of Bali for the tourist dollars that are vital to Indonesia’s economy.

Nearby on the Prambanan plain is the equally impressive Prambanan temple, which also dates back to ninth century and which in its original form constituted a massive complex of more than 250 temples of varying sizes.

The temples stand as testimony to the varied religious and ethnic history of the region, as archaeologists believe Borobudur began life as a Hindu temple, only later becoming a centre of Buddhist devotion.

The sultan’s palace stands at the centre of Yogyakarta city, and the adjacent 200-year-old water palace and the formerly grand pleasure gardens originally built for the first sultan’s wife have been redeveloped as a tourist site. Yokyakarta won “special region province” status in 1950 as a reward for the sultan’s support for independence from the Dutch colonial rulers.

With around three million people, Yogyakarta is one of Indonesia’s most densely-populated areas with most living off the land producing rice, peanuts, soybeans, sugar, cocoa, tobacco, coffee and corn.

Its lush forests produce a wide variety of timber including teak, and it has historically excelled in such traditional crafts as Batik printing, silk and weaving, brassware, ceramics and leatherware.

Yogyakarta city, the provincial capital, is home to about 1.5 million people making it the country’s second largest city.—AFP