Construction began during the reign of Sultan Hamengkubuwono I, who came to power in 1755 after the Treaty of Giyanti split the Mataram Sultanate in two. The site was already known as Pacethokan Spring, a bathing place since the reign of Sunan Amangkurat IV in the early 1720s. The project leader, Tumenggung Mangundipura, reportedly traveled twice to Batavia to study European architectural techniques, which may account for the European stylistic elements scholars have debated for centuries. By 1765, the complex was complete. A Javanese chronogram carved on the western gate encodes the year in poetry: the words translate roughly to "birds gathering nectar of the flower," and the relief surrounding it depicts exactly that -- birds siphoning honey from flowering trees. Each word carries a numerical value that spells out the Javanese year 1691, corresponding to approximately 1765 in the Western calendar.

Taman Sari was organized into four distinct zones. To the west, a large artificial lake called Segaran held islands and pavilions -- including Kenongo Island, named for the cananga trees (ylang-ylang) that once covered it, and Cemethi Island, a meditation retreat reachable only by an underwater tunnel. In the center stood the bathing complex, the most elaborate and best-preserved section today, with its tiered pools and elevated viewing towers. To the south, a complex of additional pavilions and pools extended the garden's reach. To the east, a smaller lake connected to Segaran by a 380-meter canal, roughly 20 meters wide, with bottlenecks where hanging bridges once spanned the water. The sultan would board his royal vessel at a pier on the canal's western end and travel by boat to the bathing pools -- a journey through his own private waterscape that blurred the boundary between architecture and landscape.

Perhaps the most remarkable structure in Taman Sari is Gumuling Well, a circular building on an artificial island west of Kenongo Island. It could only be entered through an underwater tunnel. Inside, a niche in the wall served as a mihrab -- a prayer niche indicating the direction of Mecca -- identifying the structure as a mosque. The central area held an elevated platform where four staircases converged, rising to a second level, while at ground level a small pool provided water for wudu, the ritual ablution required before Islamic prayer. An underground, submerged-entrance mosque inside a pleasure garden that could flood itself: the combination speaks to a Javanese Islamic sensibility in which devotion, engineering, and beauty were not separate categories but facets of a single royal vision. The mosque's existence also complicates the narrative of Taman Sari as mere indulgence -- this was a place of worship as much as leisure.

A persistent legend attributes Taman Sari's design to Demang Tegis, described as a Portuguese or Spanish engineer shipwrecked on the southern coast of Java. The Dutch scholar P.J. Veth was skeptical, noting that the architecture's strongly Javanese character contradicted the European attribution. In 2003, researcher Helene Njoto-Feillard of the University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne presented a conference paper arguing that the creators were most likely local Javanese, pointing to the absence of any mention of European involvement in Dutch historical descriptions as supporting evidence. Portuguese architectural experts nonetheless visited to examine the complex in 2001, drawn by the hybrid quality of its forms. The debate captures something essential about Taman Sari: it sits at a point where Javanese, Dutch, and possibly Iberian architectural traditions intersected, and after 260 years, the question of who designed it remains genuinely open.

The hydraulic systems that made Taman Sari extraordinary also made it fragile. After Hamengkubuwono I died, maintenance was largely abandoned -- the waterworks were simply too complex to sustain without the sultan's personal investment. The Java War of 1825-1830 caused further damage. The British invasion of the Yogyakarta Kraton in 1812 had already destroyed considerable portions of the complex. What remained gradually merged with the surrounding city. Today, the settlement of Kampung Taman occupies much of the former garden, home to approximately 2,700 residents known for their batik and traditional painting. Only the central bathing complex survives in preserved form. The rest -- the artificial lakes, the islands, the hanging bridges, the canals -- exists as archaeological traces beneath a living neighborhood. Since 2017, Taman Sari has been listed as part of a tentative UNESCO World Heritage Site encompassing the historical city center of Yogyakarta, recognition that what remains is still extraordinary, even if the water gates will never close again.