Kings' Tombs - Cloister

Gunung Kawi, Bali

This cloister¹ is located at the right-hand corner of the Kings' Tombs (previous pages). It housed the priests who maintained the site and carried out devotions to the departed rulers. Many similar chambers (example, vicinity of Queen's Tomb) - cloisters and hermitages - were excavated into the rock in and around the site.

¹Technically, cloister - a European term - means the residential quarters for monks within a monastery. Hermitages were isolated quarters for religious who lived apart from the monastic community. Neither meaning strictly applies here, where monks served a particular temple or meditated alone near a sacred site.