Bayon

The Bayon is a richly decorated Buddhist temple of the Khmer Empire at Angkor in Cambodia, built in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century as the state temple of King Jayavarman VII, standing at the center of his capital city, Angkor Thom. Originally conceived as a Mahayana Buddhist monument centered on the cult of the bodhisattva of compassion, it later adapted to the spread of Theravada Buddhism in Cambodia, its iconography and spatial organization illustrating the close relationship between Buddhism and royal authority at Angkor.