Southeast Asia

In the morning we went back to Angkor Thom to visit complexes that we did not go to on Christmas Day.

We started with the imposing Baphuon, the eleventh-century state-temple of Udayadityavarman II. At the end of a long causeway rises the temple itself, centered on a mighty central pyramid (24m high) consisting of five steep tiers divided by galleries into three enclosures. The entire west-facing wall at the base of the pyramid has been carved into the form of a gigantic reclining Buddha, although it is a little difficult to make out at first, both live and in the photos.

Restoration of Baphuon was particularly difficult. In 1959 French architects decided that the only way to save Baphuon from collapse was to dismantle it piece by piece and then put it all back together again. After the temple dismantled, though, war broke out. Work was abandoned in 1971. After gaining control, the Khmer Rouge decided to destroy all of the archaeological records. When restoration work restarted in 1995, conservators were faced with “a three-dimensional, 300,000-piece puzzle to which we had lost the picture”. Restoration wasn’t completed until 2011, and even after completion many unidentified stones can still be seen laid out around the complex.En savoir plus