On 25 sept. 06, at 23:27, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
> Another observation - despite it spectacular monumentalism, Angkor
> is quite
> primitive architecturally. The place was built around the same as
> the Notre
> Dame cathedral in Paris. While the Notre Dame is a monument of
> structural
> engineering (esp. its flying buttresses), Angkor is simply an earth
> mound
> covered with stone blocks and does not even use structural arches
> which are
> essential for spanning large areas (Angkor arches are emulated by
> overlapping stone slabs and thus do not support anything above them).
> Another difference: Notre Dame was built for "the masses" to come in -
> Angkor was built so nobody but a select few can get in.
Yet another difference: it takes 3~4 hours to see anything you need to see of Notre Dame, but it takes about 3~4 days to see _all_ the temples of the Angkor area.
Jean-Christophe Helary