Kraton of Yogyakarta

The Kasultanan of Ngayogyakarta holds a position no other customary institution in Indonesia has. Law No. 13 of 2012 on the Special Status of the Yogyakarta Special Region provides that the reigning Sultan serves as governor and the Adipati Pakualam as deputy governor, without election. The law also recognises the sultanate's and the principality's lands as held by them as legal persons.

That arrangement makes a matter that elsewhere is customary into a constitutional one. The dispute over the sabdaraja issued in 2015, which altered titles and opened the way to succession by the eldest daughter, is therefore not a family dispute but one bearing on who will serve as governor, and it was conducted openly in public.

In 2023 UNESCO inscribed the Cosmological Axis of Yogyakarta and its landmarks on the World Heritage List. What was inscribed is not a building but a line: from Panggung Krapyak in the south through the court to the Tugu Pal Putih in the north, with Merapi at the northern end and the Southern Ocean at the southern, together with the spatial order and ceremonial cycle that follow it.

Inscribing a line rather than an object requires that what is protected include the view along that line, so that tall building along it becomes a related matter. The sultanate holds the ceremonial cycle that makes the line function — the labuhan to Merapi and to Parangkusumo at its two ends — and the inscription therefore places this institution as a party whose continued ceremony forms part of the conditions of inscription.