Pimai Historical Park

The park is built around Phimai Stone Sanctuary, the largest and most complete Khmer monument in Thailand, on 115 rai laid out as a rectangle 565 metres wide and 1,030 metres long. The name Phimai most likely comes from “Vimaya” or “Vimayapura”, which appears in a Khmer inscription on the stone door frame of the front gallery and in several other inscriptions — possibly the name of an image or of the sanctuary itself. What sets Phimai apart is its orientation. Almost every other Khmer sanctuary faces east; this one faces south, thought to be so that it addressed the road running up from Sothorn Pura, the Khmer capital, which entered Phimai from that side. The inscriptions and the building style — Baphuon, the dominant art of its day — place the start of construction around the late 11th century, in the reign of Suryavarman I.

In pictures