A city guide to Phnom Penh

The Cambodian capital is reinventing itself after a turbulent century - emerging as a dynamic modern city with a creative culinary scene and stellar architecture.�

Every city is built on its stories but few have a back catalogue quite like Phnom Penh's. Located on the confluence of two of Asia's most important waterways (the Tonl� Sap and Mekong Rivers), Phnom Penh was founded as a Buddhist temple village in the 14th century. For much of the next century it was the nation's capital, a status it regained in 1866, and retained during a 111-year chapter as part of French Indochina, along with Laos and Vietnam. During the early decades of the 20th century, Phnom Penh was hailed as the 'Pearl of Asia'. The Second World War ushered in a Japanese invasion and occupation, followed by the first Indochina War, a brief hopeful window of independence and a slow descent into a genocide so catastrophic it would empty the city of almost all its inhabitant.�

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