History,

        with a population of more than 90, 000,siem reap is the seat of the eponymous province,located six km from Angkor region.at the junction of two perpendicular routes,the siem reap river[stung]and National road  N 06[NR6].In cambodia the city is considered unique,as beyon its administrative,business and residential functions,its proximity to the angkor site has converted it into an international tourism hub.this status has been reinforced since 1992 and the inscription of Ang kor on the World Heritage list.Hence,the country developement,the demographic boom and the tourism increase[two millions tourists expected 2008]drew siem reap into a cycle of farreaching and rapid changes with major implication for its urban landscape.

Geographical background

                Temples and monasteries constituting the Angkor site(AD802 to 1432)are spread all over the siem reap province located in the North-West present day cambodia.this teritory is bordered to the north-east by the phnom kulen mountain(25km long by 15 km wide)mountain range.the main rivers floating through and irrigating the angkor plain(Rolous,thesecond ganges,Siem reap river,the third ganges and the Pouk river,16km west of siem reap today)are sourceed from this massif.It therefore constitutes the"water tower"for this territory,where the deep water tables of the region also recharge.HISTORY The history of angkor as reconstituted by a century of epigraphic and monumental research,starts some time in the late VIII ^th century with the peregrinations of a young prince who unites a divided contry.Consecrated"universal sovereign"on top of the phnom kulen in 802 AD,he reigned with the name of Jayavarman II and spent his last years in the city of Hariharalaya,located in the Rolous region,around 10 km to the east of present day Siem Reap.

        jayavarman II appears not only to be the "suprem king'"reigning in the angkor region but also-or rather perhaps-the creator of the angkrian kingdom,of its titulature and of some of its cults which lasted under the following dynasties.the angkorian period starts officially with Jayavarman II.Apart from a brief 20 years of infidelity in the Xth century,all his successors will remain in the region untill its abandonment sometime in the XVth century.they all took part in establishing the huge complex that finally became angkor.

        nevertheless,the khmer civilization di not appear at once: its history is rooted in hardly known cambodian prehistory,although research carried out for the past 10years underlines the presence of continuities and of a slow maturation starting during the anepigraphic period{the bronze age 1500 -500 BC -300 AD.}in the origin of the first sophisticated political system,then in the first state.chinese reports have specifically kept record of the first "hinduised kingdom'"called Funan.,originating from the south,close to the mekong delta in the IVth and the VIth centuries.Gradually another state, called Chenla by the same sourses,took over with the capital which supposedly was located at sambo prei kuh,north of kompong thom,on the northern shore of the tonle sap lake,half- way between siem reap and present capital  phnom penh.the "crumbling"of chenla in the VIIIth century created the jumbled period,especially as far as epigraphy and history are concerned.Generally regarded as a period of various and successive dissensions and fighting between more or less independent small kingdoms,jayavarman II halted this instability,if not completely at least sufficiently to mountian a new cohesion vital for the expansion of the "khmer empire"reaching its apogee five centuries later,this empire reigned over present cambodia,southern viet nam and lao and reached central and nort eastern thailand.

        although severalindications suggest that many settlements had already existed since prehistory in the angkor region,and on the shores of the tonle sap and that major settlement ,especially in the west, was established in the early VIIth century,the establishment of Jayavarman II in Rolous,during the late VIIIth century,usually marks the beginning of Angkor as the capital of the Angkorian Empire.For the next 700 years,a series of successive capitals,hundreds of often migrating and superimpose villages settlements were formed creating huge teriterial developments in the region .The ensuing rapid densification completely transformed the entire Angkorian territory.The Phnom Bakheng area was a favourite of the sovereign.It is the most central of the few hills on the alluvial plain gradually descending from the north-east sanstone plateau of the Phnom kulen to the Tonle Sap lake.When yasovarman  I abandoned Hariharalaya in the late IXth century,he decided to establish the central temple of his new city of yasodhara pura on this hill located seven kilometres north of Siem reap.and it is this area which henceforth constitutes the core of the present site of Angkor, where his successors built their cities and main religious foundations, among them the dominating pyramid temples, symbolic milsetones signalling the centre of the capitals to come. Some sovereigns come out of this palimpsest, thanks to inscriptions celebrating their feats and to the spectacular monuments attributed to them. Suryavarman II (1113-c.1150) is one of them. He was the creator of the Angkor Wat Vishnu temple rightly regarrde as the architecturas acme of the Khmer civilisation. Jayavarman VII (1181-c.1150) a Buddhist King, founder of the last capital, Angkor Thom, centred on the Bayon temple and its famous face towers, entrenched in an impressive aquare surrounding wall of 3 kilometres per side. But the relocation of the capital to the Phnom Penh region, during the mid XVth century marked the beginning of the end for Angkor, which seemed to be quickly abandoned. Only a few places were preserved such as Angkor Wat, which remained a major Buddhist pilgrimage site and that the first western explorers "discovered" four centuries later in the middle of the forest, which at that time largely covered the region. The Angkor site that can be visited nowadays offers an outstanding concentration of monumental architectural works of art, coming from the accumulation of centuries of royal foundations. Sadly only the religious skeleton of this angkorian civilisation remains in the vestige of a vegetal case largely destroyed by deforestation and modern developments. But beyond the great temples and the protected central area, Angkor spreads all over the rigion, including Siem Reap which was built at the junction of three main ancient canals-including the present river-and within an environment scattered with angkorian remains. Our recent archaeological research using both remote sensing and archaeological excavation shows the scale of the whole region, the magnitude of this angkorian non-monumental aspect: the modest ruins of hundreds of small sanctuaries, thousands of ponds and earth platforms are a testimony to the myriad of village settlements that were part to a dense and complex network of roads, canals, dams and reservoirs (barray). They formed a vast territorial structure, where the ancient intensity of land use can still be seen thands to the prisence of fossilised paddy-field partitions. Shaped be religious foundations, human settlements, road and hydraulic networks, Angkor formed a large metropolis covering the whole rigion within an outstanding urban-rural continuum. To conclude this brief introduction, remember that Siem Reap's current development presents a serious and unavoidable threat for the conservation of Angkor. And that safeguarding the monumental temples should not mask the wealth of the territory's archaeology and its importance for a proper understanding of the angkorian phinomenon.