Banteay Kdei

Banteay Kdei is a Buddhist monastery a couple of hundred metres west of the royal bathing pool of Srah Srang. It was built by Jayavarman VII at the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries over an earlier sanctuary, and its name is translated as the citadel of cells. The sandstone here is soft and the masonry was laid in haste, so the galleries have settled and part of the vaults has collapsed, and the temple was simply left in consolidated ruin. Devatas in niches and surrounds of carved stone foliage have survived on the walls and corner pilasters. In 2001 Japanese archaeologists found a pit in the courtyard with more than two hundred broken Buddhist images thrown into it during the return to Hinduism.

On the map