Welcome to Phnom Penh, the capital and largest city of Cambodia, set at the meeting point of the Tonlé Sap and Mekong rivers. Its name comes from the Buddhist temple Wat Phnom and from Lady Penh, the city's legendary founder. Phnom Penh was founded in 1372 and became the capital after the fall of Angkor. In the years after independence, its French colonial, New Khmer and Art Deco buildings earned it the nickname Pearl of Asia. The city also carries a painful memory: in 1975 the Khmer Rouge forcibly emptied it of its entire population. Our tour moves from royal splendour to places of remembrance.
Royal Palace
Photo: Jean-Pierre Dalbéra from Paris, France · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia CommonsBefore you stands the Royal Palace, the official residence of the King of Cambodia. Its full Khmer name is Preah Barom Reacheaveang Chaktomuk Serey Mongkol. Cambodian monarchs have lived here since it was built in the 1860s, apart from an absence during the turmoil of the Khmer Rouge years. King Norodom built the original palace between 1866 and 1870, but it was largely demolished and rebuilt between 1912 and 1932. The palace stands on the western bank where the Tonle Sap meets the Mekong, a confluence called Chaktomuk, a name that alludes to the four-faced god Brahma.
Silver Pagoda
Photo: plusgood · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia CommonsOn the south side of the Royal Palace lies the Silver Pagoda, officially Wat Ubaosoth Ratanaram and often called the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. Inside is a small green crystal Buddha, the Emerald Buddha of Cambodia. Nearby stands a life-sized gold Maitreya Buddha, commissioned by King Sisowath and created in the palace workshops in 1906 and 1907. It weighs 90 kilograms and was set with 9,584 diamonds, the largest of 25 carats. During the reign of King Norodom Sihanouk, the pagoda was inlaid with more than 5,329 silver tiles, though visitors can see only a small part of them.
Wat Phnom
Photo: Khmerloy9 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia CommonsClimb the small hill to Wat Phnom, the Mountain Pagoda, which reaches a total height of 46 metres and gave the city its name. According to legend, in 1372 a wealthy old woman called Penh saw a Koki tree floating in the river during a rainstorm. With the help of villagers she pulled it ashore, and inside a hollow in the trunk they found four Buddha statues and a statue of Vishnu. The pagoda is named after her, and the stupa on the hill symbolises the name of Phnom Penh itself.
Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum
Photo: Michael Gruijters at Dutch Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia CommonsWe now come to a place of solemn remembrance, the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. This former secondary school was turned by the Khmer Rouge into Security Prison 21, known as S-21, and used from 1975 until the regime fell in 1979. An estimated 20,000 people were imprisoned here, and it was one of up to 196 torture and execution centres set up by the regime. In 2010 a tribunal convicted the prison's chief, Kang Kek Iew, of crimes against humanity. Please move through these rooms quietly, in memory of those who suffered here.
National Museum of Cambodia
Photo: Christophe95 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia CommonsNorth of the Royal Palace stands the National Museum of Cambodia, the country's largest museum of cultural history and its leading archaeological museum. Its buildings were inspired by Khmer temple architecture and built between 1917 and 1924. Inside you will find one of the world's largest collections of Khmer art: sculpture, ceramics, bronzes and ethnographic objects, more than 14,000 items in all. They span prehistoric times and the periods before, during and after the Khmer Empire, which at its height stretched from Thailand across Cambodia to southern Vietnam.
Choeung Ek
Photo: Timgray200 · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia CommonsAbout 17 kilometres south of the city centre lies Choeung Ek, a former orchard that the Khmer Rouge used as a Killing Field between 1977 and 1979. It was attached to the Tuol Sleng prison. After the regime fell, the remains of 8,895 victims were exhumed from mass graves here. Choeung Ek is the best known of around 300 Killing Fields, where the regime executed more than one million people during the Cambodian genocide. This is a place for silence and reflection, honouring the memory of the victims.
Lomakuume
