Ta Prohm Temple is a very popular part in a typical Angkor tour. It's the only major stop that wasn't fully reclaimed from the jungle. Many of the walls and structures have been smothered by huge silk-cotton trees and strangler figs, which grow over, around, and through the ancient stone blocks. These trees both hold the ruins together and cause them to collapse.
A visit to Ta Prohm really gives you the feeling of discovering something hidden and truly ancient, giving you a real Indiana Jones vibe. The area served as a filming location for the 2001 movie, Tomb Raider. While other Angkor temples were digitally altered, Ta Prohm’s appearance was largely unchanged in the film.
Built from 1186 and originally known as Rajavihara (Monastery of the King), Ta Prohm was a Buddhist temple dedicated to the mother of Jayavarman VII. It is one of the few temples in the Angkor region where an inscription provides information about the temple’s dependents and inhabitants. Almost 80,000 people were required to maintain or attend at the temple, among them more than 2700 officials and 615 dancers.
Ta Prohm is a temple of towers, closed courtyards and narrow corridors. Many of the corridors are impassable, clogged with jumbled piles of delicately carved stone blocks dislodged by the roots of long-decayed trees. Bas-reliefs on bulging walls are carpeted with lichen, moss and creeping plants, and shrubs sprout from the roofs of monumental porches. Trees, hundreds of years old, tower overhead, their leaves filtering the sunlight and casting a greenish pall over the whole scene.
