Sith shrine Before the rise of the Galactic Republic , the ancient Sith Lord s built a shrine on Coruscant . The Jedi Order later constructed the Jedi Temple over the shrine , hoping to neutralize its dark energies . However , the residual power of the dark side of the Force inherent in the shrine had seeped out over the intervening millennia , weakening the precognitive abilities of the Order . History . The Sith constructed a shrine on the planet Coruscant around five thousand years before the rise of the Galactic Empire on top of a light side vergence , hoping to corrupt it with the Dark side of the Force , which eventually succeeded . Following the Sith Order ' s defeat at the hands of their sworn enemies , the Jedi Order , the Jedi Temple was raised over the shrine ' s foundations in a symbolic attempt to bury the legacy that the Sith had left behind on the galactic capital . The Jedi also hoped that the placement of their Temple over the shrine , and the presence of so many light - side adepts within it , would serve to neutralize and cap the dark power inherent in the shrine , and eventually return the vergence to the light side . The shrine itself was something of an oddity , as such places were known to exist only on planets that had been historically considered to be Sith worlds . Over the intervening millennia , the dark energies of the shrine seeped upward and outwards , weakening the Jedi Order . However , even the most powerful of Jedi Master s remained completely unaware of this fact , and believed that the shrine ' s power had been successfully contained . About a thousand years before the destruction of the Jedi Order at the hands of Darth Sidious and Darth Vader , the existence of the shrine became known to the Sith Lord s of Darth Bane ' s revised Order , and remained a closely guarded secret . Following the destruction of the Jedi Order , and the reformation of the Galactic Republic into the Galactic Empire , Darth Sidious — known publicly as Emperor Palpatine — had the Jedi Temple converted into the Imperial Palace . It was at that time that Sidious made the decision to excavate the shrine , the process of which was carried out entirely by machines under the supervision of Sidious ' s personal droid 11 - 4D . The shrine ' s existence remained as much a secret as it ever had ; only Sidious himself was known for certain to possess knowledge of it . Even Darth Vader , Sidious ' s Sith apprentice and second in command , was unaware of the shrine ' s existence as of 14 BBY . Sidious used the shrine as his private sanctum and spent much of his time there meditating on the nature of the dark side . Eventually , he planned on enlisting Vader ' s help within the shrine to probe the dark side for its most powerful secrets , hoping to gain the ability to reshape reality according to his own ideals . Behind the scenes . The Sith shrine was introduced in the 2014 novel " Tarkin " , written by James Luceno . The idea of the Jedi Temple being built atop ancient temples would have been explored in a story arc in the television series " " , but the show was cancelled before such episodes could be produced or released . In the arc , former Jedi Padawan Ahsoka Tano would have returned to the Jedi Temple and , with several other Jedi , taken drilling machines down far beneath the Jedi Temple and discovered a Sith temple beneath it . Series director Dave Filoni and creator George Lucas decided that the Jedi Temple had been built over ruins from ancient worshipers of the Force , possibly including the Sith . The concept of the Jedi Temple being built over a wellspring of dark side energy was previously introduced in the continuity of " Star Wars " Legends . In introducing the concept through " Tarkin " , Luceno compared the shrine and the construction of the Jedi Temple atop of it to how , the , destroyed the Aztec city of . After the destruction , Aztec temples were razed and churches were built in their place , with legends persisting that the churches had not entirely eliminated the power of the temples . In " Tarkin " , Luceno introduced a similar concept where he postulated that the Jedi were not able to stop the power of the shrine .