Norodom Boulevard, Major boulevard in central Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
Norodom Boulevard is a major thoroughfare running through central Phnom Penh, extending for several kilometers across the city. Educational institutions, embassies, and government offices line the avenue, indicating its importance as a key urban corridor.
During the French protectorate the boulevard was named Boulevard Doudart de Lagrée after Ernest Doudart de Lagrée, the corvette captain who moved the capital from Oudong to Phnom Penh. The Communist Party of Kampuchea later renamed it Tou Samouth Boulevard, and it kept that name until 1995, when a citywide campaign replaced communist street names with royal and historical ones and it became Norodom Boulevard.
The boulevard serves as a daily gathering place where workers, traders, and commuters move through at different rhythms. Its width and layout reflect how the city has grown and adapted over time, with the space being used in many informal ways beyond formal traffic flow.
Bus Line 2 runs from the Chroy Changvar roundabout via Wat Phnom down Norodom Boulevard to National Road 2, ending at the Takhmao bridge; Line 3 joins the boulevard at Street 106 and leaves at Street 130 toward Central Market. Vendors and illegal parking on the pavements between Wat Phnom and Independence Monument still obstruct pedestrians, including users of the special tactile tiles.
In July 1988, as Vietnamese commanders left Phnom Penh, Khmer citizens sat on the curbs of this boulevard, then called Tou Samouth, holding small Vietnamese and Cambodian flags to wave at passing formations near the old U.S. Embassy building.
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