he city where the temple was built, Angkor, is located in modern-day Cambodia and was once the capital of the Khmer Empire. This city contains hundreds of temples. The population may have been over 1 million people. It was easily the largest city in the world until the Industrial Revolution.
Recent research using airborne laser scanning (lidar) has shown that Angkor contains an urban core that could have held 500,000 people and a vast hinterland that could have held many more inhabitants. Researchers have also identified a ‘lost’ city called Mahendraparvata, which is located about 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of Angkor Wat.