French photographer Emil Kissel was the first photographer in the world to take photos of Angkor Wat. In 1866, his photos of Angkor Wat allow people to witness the majestic style of Angkor Wat.

In 1907, Siam returned Siem Reap, Battambang and other provinces to Cambodia. Since 1908, the French Far East Academy began to carry out decades of careful restoration projects on a large number of Angkor monuments, including Angkor Wat.

The 190-meter-wide moat of Angkor Wat is like a barrier that blocks the siege of forests, so Angkor Wat is the most complete than other Angkor monuments. However, it is still mixed with trees, and some trees are deeply embedded in the red soil brick gaps in some buildings, gradually expanding the gaps, and finally pushing the red soil bricks down, causing the building to collapse.

The restoration project includes several aspects: removing weeds, woods, soil accumulations, termites, stabilizing foundations, supporting crumbling buildings, and then using the analytical reconstruction techniques developed by archaeologists in the reconstruction of monuments in Athens, Greece and Java, Indonesia, etc., to apply them to the reconstruction of Angkor monuments.

The project to clean up Angkor Wat was completed in 1911. In the 1930s, the analytical reconstruction method began to be restored by analytical reconstruction methods. The analytical reconstruction method requires that the original materials of the site must be used to restore the site according to the original ancient construction method. Only when the original object is not present are appropriately used.

This work was paused in the 1960s due to the turmoil in Cambodia and reopened in the 1990s. Angkor Temple became a Mahayana Buddhist temple in the mid-14th century, because in the 13th century, King Jayavarma VII of Zhenla adopted Mahayana Buddhism as the national religion.

After Siam invaded Angkor in the early 15th century, because the Siamese believe in Theravada Buddhism, Angkor Temple became Theravada Buddhist Temple. Since then, Angkor Temple has been the Theravada Buddhist Temple and has continued to this day.

The moat of Angkor Wat is rectangular like a mouth-shaped character, 1500 meters long in the east and south directions and 1350 meters long in the north and south directions. The total length is 5700 meters; the river surface is 190 meters wide. There are sandstone fences on the outer bank of the moat.

There is a dike directly west of the moat, each of which reaches the west gate of Angkor Wat and the east gate; the dike is an earth dike, which is 200 meters long and 12 meters wide, and is covered with sandstone plates. In ancient times, the West dike was gold-wrapped. A 30-meter-wide open space was left on the bank of the moat, surrounding the red soil and stone rectangular wall of Angkor Temple.

The wall is 1025 meters long in the east and west directions, 802 meters wide in the north and south directions, and 4.5 meters high. The middle section of the front of the wall is a 230-meter-long colonnade, with three tower gates erected in the middle. A tower gate in the middle is the mountain gate of Angkor Wat, which is connected with the two tower gates on the left and right sides with double-eaves and double-row stone column gallery. The ceiling on the top of the stone columns on the outside (west side) of the gallery is decorated with lotus and rose patterns.

Each pagoda gate has a longitudinal passage and a horizontal passage, which crosses into a cross shape. The longitudinal passages enter and exit the temple and the horizontal passages to visit the gallery. The longitudinal passages of these three pagoda gates are particularly wide and can accommodate elephants, also known as the elephant gate.

Although the top crown of the three tower gates is incomplete, the middle one is just higher than the left and right two towers, still like a mountain shape, retaining some of the original proportions, echoing the three pagodas on the front of the top floor of Angkor Wat. The other three sides of the wall are smaller and simple, and only small paths can be accessed. Few people go there.

A statue of Vishnu is enshrined under the South Tower Gate. When Suyavarman II was reigned, this statue of Vishnu was originally enshrined in the top temple of Angkor Temple. After the Angkor Temple was converted to Buddhism, it was invited here to guard it. The inner side of the gallery (east side) is a stone wall, with gourd lattice windows. The gallery wall faces the goddess relief sculpture of the Angkor Wat Gallery

The west side is decorated with dancer reliefs; the east side of the gallery wall is decorated with dancing or riding beast warriors and flying goddesses. A flying goddess relief at the south side of the gate is a unique flying goddess with a smile in the temple. The temple square surrounded by a wall covers an area of ​​82 hectares.

Apart from the temples located in the center, this square is the ruins of ancient cities and palaces. The ruins of the palace are located in the north of the temple. Nowadays, the ancient city and palaces are gone, and the ground is covered with forests. Only some street outlines are left.

The main road connecting the temple wall, Xitamen, the west mountain gate of the temple is 9.5 meters wide, about 350 meters long, and 1.5 meters above the ground. The road is paved with sandstone and stone pieces. The seven-headed cobra protector is arranged on both sides of the stone road. There is a building called the Sutra Pavilion in the south and north of the road, with entrances and exits on each base point.

To the east, north of the road, between the Sutra Pavilion and the temple, there is a lotus pond with various colors of lotus flowers blooming; the pond symmetrically located in the south of the road is a pool of clear water. At the end of the road is a cross balcony leading to the gate of the Angkor Temple, called the King Platform. There are lions on the left and right of the King Platform. Both the pond and the King Platform were added by later generations.

At the end of the Cross King Platform is the central building complex of Angkor Temple. It is basically composed of three large, middle and small rectangular corridors as the surrounding Sumeru mounts, stacked in order of large outside and small inside, large and small at the bottom. Five pagodas stand at the center as the apex, symbolizing Mount Sumeru.

American scholar Alina Manicha explains that these three floors of corridors represent the king, Brahmin, Moon, and Vishnu. Each corridor is built on each base point of each corridor, and the corridor on the upper and middle floors is set up. The tower gate is set up in four corners. The four pagodas on each floor are formed on the four pagodas, and the central pagoda forms a pattern of five-point plum blossoms.

Due to the west orientation of the temple, the position of the upper Sumeru seat is not in the middle of the next Sumeru seat, but is slightly backward and eastward, leaving more space for the gallery to the west; because of the same reason, the steps on the west are not as steep as the steps on the east.

The first floor of Sumeru is made of sandstone and is about 3 meters above the ground; above the Sumeru mount, there is a corridor about 3 meters high, surrounding the Angkor Temple as the mouth-shaped moat.

The corridor is rectangular, 190 meters long in the north and south, and 220 meters long in the east and west. Around the corridor, there are four tower gates and eight corridor gates, one tower gate in each corner, three corridor gate in each west, and one corridor gate in each north and south. The tower gate and corridor gate have two stone steps inside and outside, which can connect to the first floor inner courtyard and the temple outer courtyard.

The inner wall of the corridor is both the exterior wall of the temple and the giant gallery. On the outside of the corridor, there are two rows of square stone pillars side by side, one row supports the gallery arch and the other row supports the semi-arched edge corridor. The double-eaved arch of the corridor covers terracotta tiles to protect the stone sculptures on the gallery wall from sun and rain.

The stone walls of the gallery are arranged in eight giant reliefs with fine carvings. Each relief is more than two meters high and nearly a hundred meters long. The total length is more than seven hundred meters, and it surrounds the temple. The relief depicts two famous Sanskrit epics in India, the stories in "Ramayana", "Mahabharata" and some history of the Angkor Dynasty.

From the northwest corner, the Western Gallery shows the scene of Rama, the prince of Ayudah, defeating Ravana, the devil king of Rava, and the story of the war between the Jalava and Bandu people in Mahabharata.

There are several reliefs in the Southern Gallery, which are related to the history of the Angkor Dynasty. One of them depicts Sujevamo II wearing a crown on his head. He sat barefoot and crossed his legs on the throne, with his left hand facing the left, and his back hand leaning against the handrail of the throne. Two servants on the left and right hand, holding a long fan in his hand, fanning the king. There are palace maids behind him, holding giant candles, and lit them in the sun.

Legendary story. Next is the 32-layer hell and 37-level paradise in Indian mythology. The East Gallery depicts a famous story in the ancient Indian mythology Pranas: Vishnu stirs the milk sea: Vishnu ordered 92 Asuras and 88 gods to stir the milk sea with vasuki as a rope.

The next scene of Vishnu defeating Asura was added by later generations in the 16th century. The Northern Gallery shows that Vishnu's eighth incarnation, Black Sky, defeated Asura Banna. The pictures of the northwest and southwest corner corridors are smaller, and are generally mostly about stories about Ramayana or Black Sky.

Entering the west gate of the first floor corridor, step into a Tianzi Pavilion called "Thousand Buddha Pavilion", surrounded by a corridor. The Tianzi Pavilion is separated by four courtyards by the cross corridor in the center. The ground is about one meter lower than the cross corridor and corridor. It was originally a pool, but now there is no water storage. The north and south corridor of the Tianzi Pavilion is about 3 meters wide. The outer side is closed, and the inner side is erected with double rows of square columns.

The cross corridor is composed of two corridors crossing into a cross shape. Each corridor consists of three parts: the middle corridor, the left side corridor and the right side corridor, supported by four rows of square columns. The inner square columns support the middle corridor, and the outer square columns support their respective side corridors. The middle corridor is about 3 meters wide and about 4.5 meters high. The upper half is a wall and the lower half is a square column.

There are reliefs of the flying girl at the bottom of the stone pillars. Some column bodies and column walls still have dark red paint, which can bring out the glorious scenes of Angkor Wat's heyday more than 800 years ago. The top of the main corridor is arched in egg-pointed arches and covered with terracotta tiles. The left and right sides are about 2.5 meters wide and about 3 meters high; the total width of the corridor is about 8 meters.

Over the centuries, worshipers have left many Buddha statues in the pavilion, but most of them have been removed now. There are many inscriptions in the pavilion that praise the good deeds of worshipers, most of which are in Khmer, and some are in Burmese. The courtyard outside the Tianzi Painting Pavilion is the inner courtyard of the first floor of the temple, such as the shape of the font.

In the northwest and southwest corners of the first floor, there is a Sutra Pavilion. The northern corridor of the Tianzi Pavilion, the central corridor and the southern corridor each have the second floor of the Xitong Temple.

The second floor base is five and a half meters higher than the first floor base, and there are rectangular corridors around it, about 115 meters long in the east and west and about 100 meters wide in the north and south. The corridor has no stone pillars or side corridors, and vertical gourd lattice windows are distributed on both walls, and the gods are reliefs. The corridor has ten corridor doors, one in each of the four corners, one in each of the south and north, and three in the west.

Each corridor door has two stone steps inside and outside, and the first inner courtyard at the bottom is connected to the second inner courtyard. The three corridor doors to the west are connected to the Tianzi Pavilion in the first surrounding area. The tower gates at the four corners of the second corridor stand a pagoda on the top. Due to disrepair, most of the tops of the four pagodas are defective, and only two or three floors of the nine-story pagoda are left.

There is a small Sutra Pavilion in the southwest and northwest corners of the second enclosure. The two Sutra Pavilions are connected by the north-south road of a cross-shaped balcony, and the east-west road of the balcony connects the west gate of the second floor corridor and the west gate of the third floor corridor. This cross balcony was also added by later generations.

The third-level foundation of the temple, namely the innermost and highest-level foundation, is called Bagan. It is square, shaped like a pyramid, but it is stacked into two sections and rises up 12 meters high, which is twice as high as the first and second-level foundations. There are twelve steps around the foundation, three on each side of the southeast, west and north. The twelve steps are very steep and must be used together to climb, symbolizing the hardships of climbing the sky.

A field-shaped double-eaves gallery on the steps is 60 meters square, with five pagodas on top, one pagoda gate in each corner, and a 42-meter-high main tower stands in the middle. The top of the tower is 65 meters above the ground, and the main tower is taller than the four corner towers; the five pagodas are arranged in the shape of five plum blossoms. Each tower has a shrine.

The shrine of the main pagoda was originally the four main points, and one Vishnu was offered. After the Theravada Buddhism was changed to worship, the Buddha statue was offered, surrounded by Buddha statue walls on three sides. Between the pagoda gates, and between the pagoda gates and the main pagoda, it is connected by the Tianzi Gallery.

The Tianzi Gallery consists of a corridor and a cross corridor. The corridor is divided into two parts: the main corridor and the side corridor. The walls near the main corridor are vertical gourd lattice windows. Four base points in the east, west, south, and north are distributed with rectangular barbed windows. The inner side of the main corridor is a column row, and there are five meters high arches on the main corridor, and the columns are arranged on the inner side corridor, and the semi-arches are three meters high.

The Cross Corridor has a corridor, two side corridors, one vault, two and a half vaults, and two rows of square stone pillars on the left and right sides. The vaults and half vaults of the Tianzi Gallery are covered with terracotta tiles. The ceiling at the top of the gallery is carved with lion-headed snake figures, and the entrances of the gallery and shrines are covered with carved door lintels and triangular walls.

There are corridor doors in the middle of the four sides of the corridor, southeast, west and northeast, each corridor has a second floor with steps below; there are two steps below the tower gates in the four corners of the corridor, each with two steps below the second floor.

The layout of Angkor Wat is very uniform and rhythmic. The Angkor Wat complex has two forms of symmetry, mirror symmetry and rotational symmetry. From the moat, outer wall to the central building complex, it presents accurate mirror symmetry with the central axis that runs across the east and west directions: even the two Sutra Pavilions and two pools on the central axis of the Plaza Avenue are symmetrically distributed on both sides.

Looking at Angkor Temple from the Plaza Avenue, you will see a high tower in the middle. Two smaller towers are symmetrical on the left and right, forming a mountain shape. In addition to the central axis symmetry, the Wuzi plum blossom tower group on the top of the temple has two more rigorous rotational symmetry: from the east, west, south, and north, presenting the same mountain shape composition, forming a 90-degree rotational symmetry.

There is also the second set of 90-degree rotational symmetry: from the northwest, southwest, southeast, northeast, and four diagonal directions, the same mountain-shaped composition is also the same. Only in this way can the five pagodas be arranged to maximize the symmetry effect, and the same styling theme is repeatedly displayed from all directions.

The Taiji structure originated from Greece and was introduced to India. After being introduced to Zhenla from India, it evolved into one of the important characteristics of Angkor Wat architecture. It may be because Cambodia often suffers from the flooding of the Meigong River. To this day, many houses are built on elevated roads to avoid floods. Many Angkor monuments have Taiji.

The Bakken Temple in the early 10th century had five-story foundations, and the sky palace in the mid-10th century had four-story foundations. The Angkorian foundation might have avoided floods at first, but later the foundations developed into an important part of Angkor's architectural art. High-rise buildings that do not have river water, such as the small Sutra Pavilion in the inner courtyard of the second and third floor of Angkor Wat, also had foundations.
Chapter completed!