These photographs of Angkor Vat (sic), Angkor Thom, and some of the smaller Cambodian temples show the difference between the overgrown ruins of 1912 and today’s domesticated tourist attraction. Guide aux Ruines d’Angkor by Jean Commaille contains many more photos plus maps of the grounds and plans of the temple construction. The depredations of the jungle would eventually have destroyed everything but I still prefer to see the walls and statues festooned with foliage.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Angkor Wat street view
• Pleasure of Ruins
• Angkor panoramas
• The Temples of Bagan
• The temples of Angkor
“…walls and statues festooned with foliage.” remind me of the opening scene from Raiders.
If you like Ballard’s the Drowned World and underwater caves how about
http://www.airpano.com/360Degree-VirtualTour.php?3D=Underwater-Orda-Cave
&
http://www.oddee.com/item_96695.aspx
The Drowned World also has its share of overgrown ruins. Ballard–and dystopian sf in general–does to our own cities what time has done to the ancient world.
That Mycenean arch with the headless lions is one of those ruins you often see in older books half-buried in earth. Same with the ruins of Rome in Piranesi’s time, arches and columns hadn’t been excavated so they all look truncated.