Ancient Angkor temple, a maze built of 3,00,000 blocks of sandstones, re-opens following decades of reconstruction work post 1960s
Ancient Angkor temple, a maze built of 3,00,000 blocks of sandstones, re-opens following decades of reconstruction work post 1960s
It has taken half a century, but archaeologists in Cambodia have finally completed the renovation of an ancient Angkor temple, reportedly the world's largest three-dimensional puzzle.
The work has involved taking apart the Baphuon monument's 300,000 sandstone blocks and piecing them back together.
The temple work, hampered by tropical rains and civil war, required taking apart lakhs of sandstone blocks and piecing them back again
The project began in the 1960s but was interrupted by a civil war, and restarted in the mid-1990s.
The 11th-century three-tier tower draws two million tourists a year.
300,000 pieces
The re-opening was attended by Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni and French Prime Minister Francois Fillon.
"The work at Baphuon has been exceptional," Mr Fillon said.
Meanwhile, King Sihamoni expressed "profound gratitude to France" for funding the 10m-euro project. A French-led team of archaeologists decided that the only way to save the temple was to take it apart.
They dismantled the monument, laying all the stone blocks in the surrounding jungle. Each piece was painted with a number, matching an entry on the master plan, so the tower could be rebuilt.
But work was disrupted by the civil war and the records needed to reconstruct it were destroyed by the Khmer Rouge, a communist regime that took power in 1975.
The reconstruction was only restarted in 1995. Pascal Royere, who has been overseeing the project, said the early years had been the hardest.
"We were facing a three-dimensional puzzle, a 300,000-piece puzzle to which we had lost the picture. And that was the main difficulty of this project," Mr Royere said.
"There is no mortar that fills the cracks which means that each stone has its own place. You will not find two blocks that have the same dimensions."
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