Jayavarman VII builds the Bayon at Angkor

1203

The great Khmer king, already old, ordered the construction of a temple-mountain at the center of his new capital Angkor Thom. Its fifty-four towers, each carved with four serene faces of Avalokiteshvara gazing to the compass points, created a forest of stone smiles that still unnerves visitors in the Cambodian dawn.