Pawon is the smallest of the three temples in the Borobudur compound, standing midway between Mendut and the main pyramid. It is a single-storey structure with delicately carved external reliefs, set in a garden off the main road between the two larger temples. The size is modest but the quality of the stone carving is high.
Most visitors combine Pawon with a visit to Mendut rather than treating it as a destination in its own right. The alignment of all three temples — Mendut, Pawon, and Borobudur — on a near-perfect north-south axis is clearly intentional and has generated considerable archaeological debate about the ritual landscape the Sailendra dynasty created across the Kedu Plain.