The world-renowned temples of Angkor, in northwest Cambodia, stand as an impressive monument to the greatest ancient civilization in Southeast Asia. Spiritually, politically and geographically, Angkor was at the heart of the great Khmer Empire. During the Angkorian period, the ruling god-kings built imposing temples as a way of asserting their divinity, leaving a legacy of more than one hundred temples built between the ninth and fifteenth centuries. The nearest town to the temples is Siem Reap, a once sleepy backwater now a tourist hot-spot.