Geshley: I want people to vew uncle not as a dead city. But imagine if we were to live in uncle back in the thirteenth, fourteenth century at its peak,. We had these giant temples like uncle wad, uncle tom the byon and other landmarks. Geshley: A lot of the lot of the architecture that was developed in what became tyland, indifferent sites in sukata even or in utia, to be developments on oncore and architecture. Oncor has also been generative of cultural production more broadly. It literally generated camera literature.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the largest and arguably the most astonishing religious structure on Earth, built for Suryavarman II in the 12th Century in modern-day Cambodia. It is said to have more stone in it than the Great Pyramid of Giza, and much of the surface is intricately carved and remarkably well preserved. For the last 900 years Angkor Wat has been a centre of religion, whether Hinduism, Buddhism or Animism or a combination of those, and a source of wonder to Cambodians and visitors from around the world.
With
Piphal Heng
Postdoctoral scholar at the Cotsen Institute and the Programme for Early Modern Southeast Asia at UCLA
Ashley Thompson
Hiram W Woodward Chair of Southeast Asian Art at SOAS University of London
And
Simon Warrack
A stone conservator who has worked extensively at Angkor Wat
Producer: Simon Tillotson