Place
Phnom Penh
Phnom Penh is the capital of Cambodia, on the rivers where the Tonle Sap and the Bassac meet the Mekong.[1][2] The 2019 census counted 2,281,951 people in the city, 14.7 percent of the country's population and the most of any province.[3] The census counts the capital at the level of a province, as one of the country's 25 municipalities and provinces.[4]
Name
The city takes its name from Daun Penh (Grandmother Penh) and the hill she raised. By the story told in Phnom Penh, in 1372 a flood carried a koki tree to her home on the riverbank, and inside it she found four bronze statues of the Buddha and a stone deity.[1][5] She built a hut for them and asked her neighbors to raise the mound into a hill. The shrine on it became Wat Phnom, first called Wat Phnom Daun Penh. Phnom means hill or mountain, and her name and the hill became the name of the city.[1] The sources differ on the river: The Phnom Penh Post places her on the Tonle Sap, and a 2017 supplement of the same paper on the Mekong.[5][6]
The river in front of the Royal Palace is called Chaktomuk, the "Four-faced river", for the meeting of the Upper and Lower Mekong, the Tonle Sap and the Bassac.[1][2] A statue of Daun Penh stands across the street from Wat Phnom.[1]
Royal capital
King Ponhea Yat moved the capital from Angkor to Phnom Penh in the 1430s. Cambodianess dates the founding to 1434, the 2017 Post supplement to the year after, and a 2001 Post article to 1437.[1][6][5] He had the hill raised and a wooden temple built on it, and his remains are kept in the large stupa at Wat Phnom.[5][1] In 1497 the capital went back to Angkor, and it moved several more times after that.[1]
In 1865 King Norodom moved his palace from Oudong to Phnom Penh.[5][1] The 2017 Post supplement dates the Royal Palace to 1866. Its Throne Hall, finished in 1919, replaced a wooden hall of 1869, and the Khemarin Palace in its grounds is the residence of the King and Queen.[6] The Silver Pagoda stands just south of the main quarter of the palace.[7]
Protectorate city
Cambodia came under French rule in 1863, for nearly 90 years.[8] At the end of the 19th century the French built dams, roads and small bridges, and a French quarter grew in the north of the city. The city came to be called the "Pearl of Asia".[1] The National Museum, begun in 1917, opened on April 13, 1920, under King Sisowath, north of the Royal Palace, and holds Angkorian and pre-Angkorian sculpture.[6]
The Central Market, Phsar Thmey, was built after a design competition in 1934 and opened in 1937, with a large central dome and four arms.[9][1] The French development agency calls it a showpiece of the architecture of the protectorate.[9]
New Khmer Architecture
Cambodia became independent on November 9, 1953, under King Norodom Sihanouk.[8] In the Sangkum Reastr Niyum years that followed, young Khmer architects joined Khmer and modern architecture.[1] One of them, Vann Molyvann, is called the father of New Khmer Architecture, the movement that shaped the capital in the 1950s and 1960s. His buildings include the Olympic Stadium and the Chaktomuk Conference Hall, and some of his works were later lost to neglect and new building.[10]
He designed the Independence Monument, constructed in 1958 and opened on November 9, 1962, at the crossing of Sihanouk and Norodom Boulevards. The lotus-shaped tower, 37 meters high and crowned with one hundred naga heads, draws on the towers of Angkor Wat and the Bakong temple.[8]
1975 to 1979
During the war of the early 1970s, refugees swelled the city from about 600,000 people to more than two million.[11] Khmer Rouge forces entered Phnom Penh early on April 17, 1975, and within weeks they had emptied it, sending its people to the countryside.[11] The city stayed nearly empty for almost four years, until the regime fell in January 1979.[1][11]
The city
The 2019 census, taken from March 3 to 13, found Phnom Penh the most densely settled place in Cambodia, with 3,361 people per square kilometer, up from 2,212 in 2008. The census report calls the capital the center of the country's economic, social and cultural life.[3] The 2017 Post supplement ranks the National Museum second to the Royal Palace among the city's attractions.[6] In February 2025 a pilot of the Chaktomuk Walking Street began on the riverside along Sisowath Quay, open to people on foot on Saturday and Sunday evenings.[2]
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 Cambodianess, How Did Phnom Penh Get its Name? (April 27, 2024)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Cambodianess, Nhek Sreyleak, Phnom Penh's Riverside Gets Vibrant Makeover, New Name (February 10, 2025)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 National Institute of Statistics, Ministry of Planning, General Population Census of the Kingdom of Cambodia 2019: National Report on Final Census Results
- ↑ National Institute of Statistics, Provisional Population Census 2019 (2019)
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 The Phnom Penh Post, Bou Saroeun, Wat Phnom, the capital's most important temple (December 7, 2001)
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 The Phnom Penh Post, Moeun Nhean, Phnom Penh the capital of the Kingdom (December 7, 2017)
- ↑ Cambodianess, Torn Chanritheara, Once Believed Lost, Paintings of the Silver Pagoda Brought Back to Light (October 5, 2025)
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Cambodianess, The Independence Monument in Phnom Penh: A Symbol of Cambodia's Resilience (November 28, 2025; from Wonders of Cambodia)
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Agence française de développement, Réhabilitation du marché central de Phnom Penh (undated; in French)
- ↑ The Phnom Penh Post, Phak Seangly, Vann Molyvann, visionary architect who shaped Phnom Penh, receives a final farewell in Siem Reap (October 2, 2017)
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 The Cambodia Daily, Pin Sisovann, On April's Bitter Anniversary, No Celebrations (April 13, 2006)