Add to ORKGOn any given day thousands of cars, modeps and bicycles circle round Phnom Penh's Independence Monument. A single tower surrounded by grass and paving, the monument marks the meeting point of two of the capital's finest boulevards: Sihanouk and Norodom. Designed by Cambodia's most revered architect of the twentieth century, Vann Molyvann, and built ten years after the country attained independence from France in 1953, the tower reproduces the lotus-shaped central towers found at Angkor Wat. Elegant, simple, and standing proud, the structure connects the residents of this modern capital city with an historical legacy of power, strength, sublime artistic achievement and cultural unity