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Coat of arms of Cambodia Welcome to the Cambodia Portal / សូមស្វាគមន៍ Angkor Wat

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Cambodia, officially the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country in Southeast Asia on the Indochinese Peninsula. It is bordered by Thailand to the northwest, Laos to the north, and Vietnam to the east, and has a coastline along the Gulf of Thailand in the southwest. It spans an area of 181,035 square kilometres (69,898 square miles), dominated by a low-lying plain and the confluence of the Mekong river and Tonlé Sap, Southeast Asia's largest lake. It is dominated by a tropical climate and is rich in biodiversity. Cambodia has a population of about 17 million people, the majority of which are ethnically Khmer. Its capital and most populous city is Phnom Penh, followed by Siem Reap and Battambang.

In 802 AD, Jayavarman II declared himself king, uniting the warring Khmer princes of Chenla under the name "Kambuja". This marked the beginning of the Khmer Empire. The Indianised kingdom facilitated the spread of first Hinduism and then Buddhism to Southeast Asia and undertook religious infrastructural projects throughout the region, the most famous of which is Angkor Wat. In the 15th century, it began a decline in power until, in 1863, Cambodia became a French protectorate. Following Japanese occupation during World War II, Cambodia declared independence from France in 1953. The Vietnam War embroiled the country in civil war during the 1960s, culminating in a 1970 coup which installed the US-aligned Khmer Republic and the takeover of the communist Khmer Rouge in 1975. The Khmer Rouge ruled the country and carried out the Cambodian genocide from 1975 until 1979, until they were ousted during the Cambodian–Vietnamese War. Peace was restored by the 1991 Paris Peace Accords and subsequent United Nations peacekeeping mission, establishing a new constitution, holding the 1993 general election, and ending long-term insurgencies. The 1997 coup d'état consolidated power under Prime Minister Hun Sen and the Cambodian People's Party (CPP). (Full article...)

The 12th-century temple of Angkor Wat is the masterpiece of Angkorian architecture. Constructed under the direction of the Khmer king Suryavarman II, Angkor Wat is a Hindu-Buddhist temple.

Khmer architecture (Khmer: ស្ថាបត្យកម្មខ្មែរ), also known as Angkorian architecture (Khmer: ស្ថាបត្យកម្មសម័យអង្គរ), is the architecture produced by the Khmer during the Angkor period of the Khmer Empire from approximately the later half of the 8th century CE to the first half of the 15th century CE.

The architecture of the Indian rock-cut temples, particularly in sculpture, had an influence on Southeast Asia and was widely adopted into the Indianised architecture of Cambodian (Khmer), Annamese and Javanese temples (of the Greater India). Evolved from Indian influences, Khmer architecture became clearly distinct from that of the Indian sub-continent as it developed its own special characteristics, some of which were created independently and others of which were incorporated from neighboring cultural traditions, resulting in a new artistic style in Asian architecture unique to the Angkorian tradition. The development of Khmer architecture as a distinct style is particularly evident in artistic depictions of divine and royal figures with facial features representative of the local Khmer population, including rounder faces, broader brows, and other physical characteristics. In any study of Angkorian architecture, the emphasis is necessarily on religious architecture, since all the remaining Angkorian buildings are religious in nature. During the period of Angkor, only temples and other religious buildings were constructed of stone. (Full article...)

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Water dwelling on the lake of Tonle Sap near Siem Reap


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