Actually, when mentioning Phnom Penh Architecture, perhaps they are not the words to immediately jump to your minds when you think about architecture. But this compact riverside capital on the banks of the Mekong River has attracted people from all over the world with its Buddhist and Chinese temples and the faded administrative buildings and villas of French Indochina which have survived in a largely unaltered state over the years.

Architecturally speaking, Phnom Penh is a comparatively new city. After 1970, Phnom Penh was devastated, almost cryo-banked in time while other Asia cities were on high speed of economic development, penetrating the skies with soaring skylines, more often than not at the charge of their heritage. Prior to the late 19th century the city had a few pagodas and clusters of wooden structures along the riverfront. Almost every actually existing structure was built after the beginning of the French colonial period in 1863. However, nowadays many of Phnom Penh’s architectural treasures from both the French Indochina era and the post colonial era have already been reduced to rubble to make way for Hollywood-inspired presence. The city today is filled with the vision of deep narrow apartments made up of a combined ground-floor business-front and upstairs residence and especially dominated by ‘Chinese-shop-house’ style buildings. Distinctively, old European influenced colonial period structures through the central city. During the time of colonization, Phnom Penh was well-known for beautiful city in French Indochina - recalling Paris in its manicured parks and picturesque boulevards lined with ornate villas. Though sometimes it’s difficult to see through the grime and disrepair of hardship years and neglect, almost that beauty still exists.

The architecture of Phnom Penh is undoubtedly the soul of Cambodia with the national flag depicting a shade of Angkor, the ancient city close to Siem Reap and capital of the 5000-thousand-year Khmer Empire, which is today a World Heritage Site and one of the most important architectural monuments in the world. The observable character and personality of Phnom Penh is changing at dizzy speed but slow down and take stock of your surroundings and you’ll discover an architectural journey through time.