Angkor Thom

At the centre of the city is Jayavarman's state temple, the Bayon, with the other major sites clustered around the Victory Square immediately to the north.

[3] Angkor Thom was established as the capital of Jayavarman VII's empire and was the centre of his massive building program.

Yasodharapura, dating from three centuries earlier, was centred slightly further northwest, and Angkor Thom overlapped parts of it.

The Ayutthaya Kingdom, led by King Borommarachathirat II, sacked Angkor Thom, forcing the Khmers under Ponhea Yat to relocate their capital southeast to Phnom Penh.

[5]: 29 Angkor Thom was abandoned sometime prior to 1609, when an early western visitor wrote of an uninhabited city, "as fantastic as the Atlantis of Plato".

[6] This manifests itself in the large scale of the construction, in the widespread use of laterite,[7] in the face-towers at each of the entrances to the city and in the naga-carrying giant figures which accompany each of the towers.

The faces on the 23 m towers at the city gates, which are later additions to the main structure, take after those of the Bayon and pose the same problems of interpretation.

Most of the great Angkor ruins have vast displays of bas-relief depicting the various gods, goddesses, and other-worldly beings from the mythological stories and epic poems of Hinduism.

Mingled with these images are actual known animals, like elephants, snakes, fish, and monkeys, in addition to dragon-like creatures that look like the stylized, elongated serpents (with feet and claws) found in Chinese art.