Meeting Lara Croft

Ta Prohm is a popular temple within the vast Angkor Wat temple complex in Cambodia. It is located a few kilometers east of Angkor Wat. Some scenes of Tomb Raider where shot a this location because of it´s picturesque settings. Hundreds of tourists are standing in front of this door every day for a picture of them to be taken (rather than expecting Angelina Jolie walking through this door again).
But of course there is (little) more to it. Ta Prohm is the modern name of a temple at Angkor temple complex. The temple was founded by the Khmer King Jayavarman VII as a Mahayana Buddhist monastery and university in 562. Up to 15th century Ta Prohm was expanding, at its peak 12.500 people lived here, including 18 priests and 615 dancers. After the fall of the Khmer empire in the 17th century, the temple of Ta Prohm was abandoned and neglected for centuries. With technical cooperation from India some parts were carefully preserved.

When the effort to conserve and restore the temples of Angkor began in the early 21st century, the École française d’Extrême-Orient decided that Ta Prohm would be left largely as it had been found, as a “concession to the general taste for the picturesque.”

Preserving and not restoring means of course that only a few elements of the khmer style, one can find in abundance in the other temples around Angkor, are still visible.

The photogenic and atmospheric combination of trees growing out of the ruins and the jungle surroundings certainly attracts many tourists.The challenge to take photos here is patience, meaning to wait until the endless flow a tourist groups, especially from China, gives you a few minutes for shooting.

So there is hardly a chance for tranquility to absorb this atmosphere of ” mystique decay”. Or to reflect on what you might call ” Triumph of Nature “.