Vat Phou and Associated Ancient Settlements within the Champasak Cultural Landscape

A thousand years before landscape architecture had a name, Khmer planners drew a sacred line from the peak of Phou Kao mountain down to the Mekong — and built Vat Phou along it. Temples, shrines, reservoirs and two ancient cities unfold across some 10 kilometres of the Champasak plain in southern Laos, expressing a Hindu vision of nature and humanity in geometric order between the 5th and 15th centuries. UNESCO inscribed the cultural landscape in 2001.