Thommanon Temple

This guide to Thommanon temple near Angkor Thom follows Henri Marchal, the young French architect named curator of Angkor in nineteen nineteen, who chose to dismantle this fallen sandstone ruin rather than simply prop it up. You'll hear about the Javanese technique he studied and first tested at Banteay Srei, numbering and resetting every stone by hand, and the decades of patient labor that followed. Look closely at the devatas carved into the walls, each pinching a flower the same graceful way.