Ta Prohm Temple
The temple of Ta Prohm rates with Angkor Wat and the Bayon as one of the most popular attractions of Angkor. Ta Prohm is a unique other world experience. The temple is cloaked in dappled shadow, its crumbling towers and walls locked in the slow muscular embrace of vast root systems.
If Angkor Wat , the Bayon and other temples are testimony to the genius of the Angkor-period Khmers, Ta Prohm reminds us equally of the awesome fecundity and power of the jungle. Built in approximately 1186, Ta Prohm was a Buddhist temple dedicated to the mother of jayavarman VII. Ta Prohm is a temple of towers, close courtyards and narrow corridors.
Many of the corridors are impassable, clogged with jumbled piles of delicately carved stone blocks dislodged by the roots of long-decayed trees. Bas-reliefs on building walls are carpeted by lichens; moss, creeping plants and shrubs sprout from the roofs of monumental porches. Trees, hundreds of years old - some supported by flying buttresses - tower overhead, their leaves filtering the sunlight and casting a greenish pall over the whole scene.
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