Tiered roofs and spires on Cambodia's National Museum building in Phnom Penh
About this photograph
- Creator
- Margery H. Freeman
- Date created
- May 1997
- Location
- Phnom Penh, Cambodia
- License
- This photograph copyright ©1997. Terms of use
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- Search LEARN NC for ancient history, Angkor, architecture, art, Cambodia, French colonialism, Khmer, museums, Phnom Penh, and sculpture.
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Tiered roofs and spires grace Cambodia’s National Museum building in Phnom Penh. The top roof tiers near the central spire towers are designed in an ornamental “V” shape.
Built between 1917 and 1920 during the French colonial period, the museum building exeplifies a classical Khmer style of monumental architecture. The Cambodian royal palace is located nearby.
The National Museum holds what most consider the finest collection of Khmer artworks from the Angkor period dating from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries A.D. The collection of more than 5,000 pieces includes magnificent sandstone sculptures removed from their original Hindu or Buddhist temple sites.
The museum also displays earlier pottery and bronzes from the Funan and Chenla empires dating between the fourth and ninth centuries A.D.
