Preah Vihear Temple
— — a temple walking the cliff edge for half a mile.
Not only on a wall.
“A Khmer Hindu temple sequence laid along the spine of the Dangrek Mountains, climbing about 800 metres on foot from the first gopura to the sanctuary at the cliff edge. Begun in the early ninth century and substantially built under Suryavarman I and Suryavarman II, it was dedicated to Shiva. The view from the last terrace drops more than 500 metres to the plain.
Preah Vihear Temple, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Preah Vihear stands on the Dangrek escarpment at the northern edge of Cambodia, on the border with Thailand's Sisaket Province. The temple climbs a long ridge from the first gopura to the central sanctuary, a sequence of about 800 metres along a north-south axis. The cliff at the southern end falls more than 500 metres to the Cambodian plain. Construction spanned the ninth through twelfth centuries, with the principal building campaigns under the Khmer kings Suryavarman I and Suryavarman II. The temple was dedicated to Shiva as Shikhareshvara, the Lord of the Peak.
The temple is built of sandstone quarried from the escarpment itself, with laterite for the lower walls and platforms. Five gopuras step up the ridge in sequence, each on its own terrace, linked by stone causeways and stairs. The lintels and pediments above the doorways carry some of the finest narrative reliefs in Khmer architecture, including a Churning of the Sea of Milk on the third gopura. UNESCO inscribed the temple on the World Heritage List in 2008 for its outstanding example of Khmer architecture in its setting.
Most visitors reach Preah Vihear from the Cambodian side, by road from the town of Sra Em about thirty kilometres south. The final climb up the escarpment is steep enough that visitors transfer to motorbike taxis or four-wheel-drive vehicles at the base. The site opens from early morning to mid-afternoon. The Thai-side approach at Pha Mo I Daeng has been closed and reopened repeatedly through border disputes; the International Court of Justice ruled the temple Cambodian in 1962 and reaffirmed the surrounding ground in 2013.