Wat Bayon

History of Wat Bayon Siem Reap
In the late 12th Century was King Jayavarman VII (reigned from 1181 to about 1219) with the construction of the new capital of the Khmer Empire, Angkor Thom () big city. In the center of the 9 km ² was large, surrounded by a wall, about 1 km north of Angkor Wat, Bayon, built as a city in the beginning the main temple.
Since 15 Century, when the defeat of the Khmer empire from the emerging Thai kingdom of Ayutthaya and Angkor was abandoned, also came to the Bayon, Angkor Thom and largely forgotten. Although the area of Angkor was still inhabited, and was used for agriculture, most of which were in addition to the Angkor Wat temple, but no more visits from tropical forest and overgrown.
End of the 19th Century awakened the interest of European scientists, and subsequently also the European public (see also: Henri Mouhot) to this part of the French colonial empire in Indochina. The archaeological work has been interrupted because of the first and second World War, the Indochina war, the cross to Cambodia after the Vietnam War and the Khmer Rouge seized power for decades.
Since the late 1980s, after the end of the reign of the Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese occupation, was the Bayon, like the other temples at Angkor, again largely restored) (see also Anastylosis. Taking part are coordinated by the International Coordinating Committee (ICC) of UNESCO, archaeologists of the Cambodian Institute Authority for the Protection and Management of Angkor and the Region of Siem Reap (APSARA), the French École française d'Extrême-Orient, the deutsch German Apsara Conservation Project (Subsidized) and the University of Applied Sciences Cologne, and the Japanese Government Team for Safeguarding Angkor (JSA) and the American World Monuments Fund (WMF).
Since 1992, the Bayon, conducted as part of Angkor on the World Heritage list of UNESCO.