Trapeang Prasat Temple

Also known as Wat Prasat Trang, Prasat Trapeang Prasat, and Trapeang Ktom, it’s located around 5km east of Svay Leu village in Siem Reap. The site features a new pagoda and monastery is fronted by a small wooden vihara enclosed by the rearranged remains of an ancient temple site. Ancient remnants include laterite blocks, sandstone door frames, sandstone corner pieces, various plinths, and other small fragments, some decorated. Perhaps most interesting is the ancient temple’s original crown. To the east of the site is a large basin.

La Jonquière’s notes on the site from the early 1900s

It is a regular temple in its composition and orientation. It included a group of three limonite sanctuary, normally aligned N-S. and oriented towards east. These small, square aedicules. were all the same size, about 4 meters on each front, but that of the center was, in addition, preceded by a forebody widening in its middle part to form a kind of nave. They are all in very poor condition and their collapsed vaults fill the interior. The doors, having their frames and their decorative parts in sandstone, were very low; their various parts and remained unfinished: the decorative lintels, only sketched, are of type III.

An annex building in limonite, regularly placed and oriented towards the southeast. of the enclosure, also remained unfinished. The rectangular enclosure, measuring 18 meters N-S. over 5 meters E-W. was to be formed of a limonite wall, of which the two rows were placed. A small limonite-sandstone gopura, still unfinished and now completely ruined, interrupted it on the east face.

The pond (trapeang), which gives its name to the monument, is located about fifty meters ahead, on the E.-W. axis, shaded by quite beautiful trees.

Inventaire descriptif des monuments du Cambodge. Tome 2 / par E. Lunet de Lajonquière