Cambodia’s Angkor temples added to Google’s Street View

The latest addition to Google’s Street View imagery is one of the oldest heritage monuments in the world — Angkor Wat temple, in Cambodia. Images of the famous Angkor complex, dating back more than a 1,000 years, went live on Google’s website on Thursday as the Mountain View, California-headquartered giant added one more heritage monument to its growing list of Street View images.

Internet browsers can now virtually roam though Angkor’s historic temples and experience the structures, including the intricate carvings through Street View which will give a 360 degree view of the structures.

Over 90,000 images of Angkor were captured by Google using its Street View cars which drove around the area and Street View Trekkers, who hiked around the temple complexes with the cameras mounted on their back. According to Google, this is one of their largest digital renderings of a world heritage site and the project was completed in a little over two months’ time since it began.

About 100 temples in the vast Angkor area have been covered under this project supported by the Cambodian Government and the APSARA National Authority, an organisation created for the protection and maintenance of Angkor. The images will also be available on the Google Cultural Institute’s World Wonders Project. Browsers can zoom into fine detail on the carvings, including the famous Churning of the Sea of Milk and the Battle of Kurukshetra.

“We hope people in Cambodia and around the world can experience these Cambodian cultural and archaeological treasures in an entirely new way,” said Manik Gupta, Group Product Manager for Google Maps.

Street View is a part of Google Maps which is available in 55 countries and allows people to virtually explore and navigate a neighbourhood through 360 degree panoramic images. The last heritage monument to have been put on Street View was the Taj Mahal, a couple of months ago.

(This correspondent was in Angkor Wat at the invitation of Google)

Keywords: Street View, Google, Angkor civilisation, Angkor, Cambodia

Sourced: Cambodia News