Angkor Wat
The largest temple in the world:
Proper name: Prasat Angkor Wat
LOCATION:
The city where the temple was built, Angkor, is located in modern-day Cambodia and was once the capital of the Khmer Empire. This urban center contains hundreds of temples.Cambodia is below the Thailand.
CONSTRUCTION :
Area of about 500 acres (200 hectares), Angkor Wat is one of the largest religious monuments ever constructed. Its name means “temple city".
The temple is surrounded by a 650-foot-wide (200 meters) moat that encompasses a perimeter of more than 3 miles (5 km). This moat is 13 feet deep (4 meters) and would have helped stabilize the temple’s foundation, preventing groundwater from rising too high or falling too low.
Angkor Wat’s main entrance was to the west (a direction associated with Vishnu) across a stone causeway, with guardian lions marking the way. To the east of the temple their was an another enterance.
The heart of the temple was the central tower,its 213-foot-tall (65 meters) central tower is surrounded by four smaller towers.
HISTORY:
Built between roughly A.D. 1113 and 1150 in the first half of 12 century ,originally built as a Hindu temple dedicated to the god Vishnu, it was converted into a Buddhist temple in the 14th century, and statues of Buddha were added to its already rich artwork.
The builder of Angkor Wat was a king named Suryavarman II. A usurper, he came to power in his teenage years by killing his great uncle Dharanindravarman I while he was riding an elephant. An inscription says that Suryavarman killed the man “as Garuda [a mythical bird] on a mountain ledge would kill a serpent.
He venerated the god Vishnu, a deity often depicted as a protector, and installed a statue of the god in Angkor Wat’s central tower. This devotion can also be seen in one of the most remarkable reliefs at Angkor Wat, located in the southeast of the temple.
Work seems to have ended shortly after the king's death, leaving some of the bas relief decoration unfinished. In 1177, approximately 27 years after the death of Suryavarman II, Angkor was sacked by the Chams, the traditional enemies of the Khmer. Thereafter the empire was restored by a new king, Jayavarman VII, who established a new capital and state temple (Angkor Thom and the Bayon respectively) a few kilometres to the north.
TOURISM:
The Archaeological Survey of India carried out restoration work on the temple between 1986 and 1992. Since the 1990s, Angkor Wat has seen continued conservation efforts and a massive increase in tourism .
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