Angkor · 1200 AD
What you're walking through
Around 1200 AD, Jayavarman VII ruled the Khmer empire from Angkor. The temple of Angkor Wat, built earlier in the twelfth century by Suryavarman II and dedicated to Vishnu, already dominated the landscape. Its west-facing approach crossed a moat to rising galleries and five central towers.
To the north, the new walled capital of Angkor Thom took shape around Bayon, Jayavarman VII's Buddhist state temple. Its face towers and carved galleries contrast with Angkor Wat's ordered plan. Beyond the stone monuments, wooden buildings, fields, canals and reservoirs formed a vast inhabited landscape.
Who lives here
Khmer townsman
A cloth waist wrap · wooden homes stood around Angkor's stone temples
Craftspeople, traders and temple workers inhabited a city sustained by fields and an extensive water network. The figures and cloth wraps here are simplified interpretations of Khmer reliefs.
Khmer townswoman
Illustrative draped clothing · Bayon's reliefs show scenes of everyday life
The carvings at Bayon depict markets, households and other activities alongside royal and religious scenes. These inhabitants imagine that everyday city, with freely reconstructed clothing and colours.
This is an imagined, compact reconstruction around 1200 AD. Angkor Wat and Bayon are brought much closer together, and the moats and enclosures are shortened to fit a walkable scene. Bayon's building phases span the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries; the arrangement and identity of its faces remain debated. Roofs, carvings, colours, homes and inhabitants are illustrative. The temples are shown in use, without the jungle-grown ruins of much later centuries.
How to walk
Press Start walking above. WA SD or the arrow keys move you, the mouse looks around, hold Shift with a movement key to run at 3× walking speed, and Space jumps. Look at someone to see who they are. Esc pauses, and M turns the sound on or off. You're invisible: nobody here can see you.
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