Angkor, the ancient capital of the Khmer Empire, is beyond doubt one of the greatest wonders of the world. Between the 8th and the 14th centuries, a succession of self-styled God-Kings built an astonishing array of temples, both Hindu and Buddhist, as well as a vast and complex irrigation system. Then Angkor was abandoned under pressure from an expanding Siamese state in 1432, and lay all-but-forgotten in the jungle. It was rediscovered by astonished Europeans in the 19th century, and was in process of excavation and restoration when, in the mid-20th century, it disappeared behind a curtain of conflict and atrocity during the Vietnam War and subsequent Khmer Rouge dictatorship.

Since the final defeat of the Khmer Rouge in the early 1990s, Angkor has gradually reopened to the world. Miraculously, in a country so devastated by war, the great temple complexes have survived remarkably unscathed...

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