Prambanan's largest statue is said, in local legend, to be a petrified princess, cursed one temple short of completing the deal that was supposed to save her.
A prince, a princess, and one temple too few
Local legend, the Loro Jonggrang story, tells of a prince who demanded a princess marry him after killing her father, and who was set an impossible condition in return: building a thousand temples in a single night. Supernatural aid brought him within one temple of success before the princess had helpers simulate dawn to stop him; discovering the trick, the prince cursed her into stone as the thousandth temple, a figure many local accounts identify with the large Durga statue housed within the complex.
Damaged again in 2006
A major earthquake in 2006 caused significant structural damage to Prambanan, cracking stonework and requiring extensive stabilisation and repair, an episode that added a modern chapter to the site's long history of damage and reconstruction stretching back centuries before any earthquake was recorded in writing.
Rebuilding without inventing
As this entry's companion article notes, restoration at Prambanan has followed the principle of using only the site's own original stones wherever they can be identified and fitted back into place, a constraint that has left some structures only partially reconstructed rather than completed using new material to fill gaps.