BBC – António da Madelena, a Portuguese Capuchin friar, was one of the first Western visitors to Angkor Wat, the monumental and moated 12th Century Hindu-Buddhist temple in what, today, is northern Cambodia. It “is of such extraordinary construction”, he told the historian Diogo do Couto in 1589, “that it is not possible to describe it with a pen, particularly since it is like no other building in the world. It has towers and decoration and all the refinements which the human genius can conceive of.” – read more
