Temple Zone of Sambor Prei Kuk, Archaeological Site of Ancient Ishanapura

Before Angkor there was Ishanapura. Capital of the Chenla Empire as the 6th century AD turned to the 7th, the city known today as Sambor Prei Kuk preserves more than a hundred brick sanctuaries, ten of them octagonal — a form found nowhere else in South-East Asia. Its carved sandstone lintels, pediments and colonnades defined a pre-Angkorian style whose ideas fed directly into the classic Khmer art of later centuries. UNESCO listed the temple zone as World Heritage in 2017.