On City Island, the people
of Paris, was building Notre Dame.
Our medieval blazed. At the other end of the world
Ten thousand miles away, the Khmer erected at the same time,
one of the most fascinating capitals of humanity.
Angkor Wat, the famous mountain
temple and its five towers girdled, no longer sufficed for the glory
of his king-sun. .
It's a whole city, Angkor Thom, the great city that the mighty Jayavarman VII ordered to build.
Even larger than the Rome of Augustus, the town encircled by a wall
twelve miles long, covered with gold, subdued travelers from China.
Still, the Bayon towers on the four faces of Buddha is the jewel.
Cambodia
is bordered to the east and west by two greedy neighbors, Vietnam and Thailand (formerly Siam), who had heard the last century to the amputation of much of its territory.
But in its heyday,
L'Empire Khmer
extended its influence throughout the Mekong Delta, the current South Vietnam (Saigon / Ho chi minh ville), as well as much of the Korat Plateau, and very prominent in the territory of present day Thailand, where witnesses architectural presence of this abound.
It was not until 1907 that Siam restored Angkor in Cambodia and other provinces
annexed in the nineteenth century.
The civilization of the ancient Khmer Empire has suffered from the very beginning of our era, a quiet Indianisation which has always accommodate the uniqueness of people under its influence.
Cambodia has seen the development on its soil Hinduism adapted, suited to the
imperatives of power and aspirations of ruling elites, and a particular form
of Mahayana Buddhism the state religion became temporarily, during the reign
of Jayavarman VII (1181-1218).
HOME
Cambodia 
Home
