Baphuon Temple

The Baphuon Temple was originally dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva following its construction in the 11th century. King Udayadityavarman II commissioned the temple mountain to house a royal royal Shivalinga. The massive pyramid structure was intended to represent Mount Meru, the center of the Hindu universe.

In the 15th century, after the region converted to Theravada Buddhism, a massive reclining Buddha image was added to the western side of the temple's second tier. The builders cleverly utilized the existing stone blocks of the Hindu temple to construct the 70-meter-long figure. Much of this Buddha figure is now ruined, but the outline is still highly visible today.

The Baphuon is located inside the walled city of Angkor Thom in Cambodia, situated northwest of the Bayon temple. It sits at the heart of the vast Angkor Archaeological Park. Its central location highlights its importance during the Khmer Empire's peak.

The temple was in a state of severe collapse and required a massive anastylosis restoration project that began in the 20th century. When the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia in the 1970s, the restoration team had to flee, destroying the meticulous written records that mapped where each disassembled stone belonged. The project essentially had to restart from scratch in the 1990s and was finally completed in 2011.