Lumbini's modern layout follows a single architect's plan, drawn up decades after the site had already been identified from a pillar in a field.
The plan that organised the site
In 1978 the Japanese-sponsored master plan by the architect Kenzo Tange was adopted to organise Lumbini into three zones: a sacred garden around the Maya Devi Temple and Ashoka pillar, a monastic zone where Buddhist countries built their own temples in national styles, and a new town for visitors. Construction proceeded in stages over decades and continues; the monastic zone today reads almost like an architectural survey of world Buddhism, with Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana temples standing within walking distance of each other.
The birth account
Buddhist tradition holds that Queen Maya, travelling to her parents' home to give birth, stopped at Lumbini's grove and gave birth standing, holding a sal tree branch, and that the infant immediately took seven steps and spoke. A carved panel called the Nativity Sculpture, damaged and much handled over centuries by pilgrims touching it for blessing, is displayed in the Maya Devi Temple depicting the scene.
Older than any figure claims
Ashoka's pillar and inscription, dated to his visit around 249 BCE, are themselves already commemorating a birth remembered as having happened some three centuries earlier, at a site local tradition had evidently kept identified across that span.