Angkor Wat

The short answer

Angkor Wat is a temple complex just north of Siem Reap in Cambodia, built in the first half of the twelfth century as the state temple of the Khmer king Suryavarman II and dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu. It was gradually converted to Buddhist use after the late twelfth century and was never completely abandoned; it is a working temple today. The site covers 162.6 hectares, enclosed by an outer wall 1,024 by 802 metres and a moat 190 metres wide and more than five kilometres round, and the central tower rises 65 metres above the ground. Unusually among Khmer temples it faces west. Angkor, the wider capital it belongs to, was inscribed by UNESCO in 1992, and the site is managed by Cambodia’s APSARA National Authority. An image of the temple has been on the Cambodian flag since 1863.

Why it's worth knowing

The picture most people carry of Angkor Wat is of a monument standing alone in a forest. The forest was hiding a city.

In 2012 a helicopter carrying an airborne laser scanner, lidar, flew over Angkor. Lidar sends pulses down through gaps in the canopy and records the ones that come back from the ground, so the shape of the earth beneath the trees can be mapped without cutting any. Damian Evans and colleagues published the results in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2013. They reported “an entire, previously undocumented, formally planned urban landscape into which the major temples such as Angkor Wat were integrated”.

The finding extended earlier work. In 2007, in the same journal, Evans, Christophe Pottier, Roland Fletcher and others had published a map of greater Angkor under the title “A comprehensive archaeological map of the world’s largest preindustrial settlement complex”. A second, larger lidar campaign followed in 2015. The temple on the postcard was the centre of a planned city whose street plan survived only as low ridges and hollows in the ground, which the lidar could see and a person walking through the forest could not.

The other half of the picture is wrong too. Angkor Wat was never lost to the people who lived near it. It has been a Buddhist temple for centuries, and Portuguese visitors described it in the sixteenth century, long before the French naturalist Henri Mouhot made it famous in Europe in the 1860s.

The field notes

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What the lidar saw

The scans showed that the grid of the temple’s own enclosure did not stop at its walls. PNAS’s 2014 news feature on the work, “Mapping the lost megalopolis”, describes the land outside the walls as divided, a thousand years ago, into rectangles like city blocks, with canals, ponds and places where people lived. The stone temples are only the most durable part of that layout; most of Angkor’s buildings were of wood and have gone, and what survives of them is earthwork.

Lidar suits that kind of evidence, and the Cambodian Archaeological Lidar Initiative, which Evans led with a European Research Council grant, extended the survey across a much larger area of Cambodia in 2015.

A temple that faces west

Most Khmer temples face east. Angkor Wat faces west, and its reliefs are meant to be read anticlockwise. This led scholars including Maurice Glaize and George Cœdès to suggest Suryavarman intended it as his funerary temple. The practical effect is familiar to every visitor: at sunrise the sun comes up behind the towers, seen from the western causeway, and turns them into silhouettes.

From Vishnu to the Buddha

Angkor was sacked by the Chams in 1178, and the king who restored the empire, Jayavarman VII, built a new capital, Angkor Thom, with the Bayon as its temple. Angkor Wat was then gradually converted into a Buddhist site, with many Hindu sculptures replaced by Buddhist art, and the central shrine was walled in, with standing Buddhas, when the temple turned to Theravada Buddhism; Angkor’s wider move to Theravada Buddhism was gradual, beginning in the mid to late thirteenth century. Unusually among the Angkor temples, it was never completely abandoned: seventeenth-century inscriptions record Japanese Buddhist pilgrims settling in the Angkor area, and one of them, Ukondayu Kazufusa, celebrated the Khmer New Year at Angkor Wat in 1632. People come to pray at Angkor Wat today, not only to look.

The long gallery

The inner walls of the outer gallery carry bas-reliefs of scenes mostly from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, with battles, processions, heavens and hells. The best known, on the southern section of the east gallery, shows the Churning of the Sea of Milk. The Angkor visitor code of conduct asks that nobody touch the carvings, lean on the walls or sit on fragile stone.

A relic from Angkor Wat

Getting there

Tickets. Entry to the Angkor park is by Angkor Pass, sold by Angkor Enterprise, the state body, through its official website and ticket counters. Children under 12 do not need a ticket. Buy only through the official channels, and check the current passes and prices there.

How to behave. Angkor Wat is a working temple. The visitor code of conduct asks for clothing that covers shoulders and knees, quiet voices, no touching or climbing on the carvings and loose stones, consideration for worshippers and monks (women should not touch a monk or sit too close to one), no litter, and no money given to children.

Safety. The State Department’s advisory asks for increased caution in Siem Reap province, among six others, because of unexploded ordnance. The same advisory says not to travel to areas along the Cambodian and Thai border because of unrest; read it before you go.

When to go. The cooler, drier months around the turn of the year are the most comfortable. Arrive before dawn for sunrise from the western causeway, or come in the middle of the day when the sunrise crowd has gone.

Common questions

What did lidar reveal at Angkor Wat?

In 2012 an airborne lidar survey mapped the ground beneath the forest at Angkor in Cambodia. Damian Evans and colleagues reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2013 an entire, previously undocumented, formally planned urban landscape, into which major temples such as Angkor Wat had been integrated. A second, larger campaign followed in 2015.

Who built Angkor Wat and when?

Angkor Wat was built in the first half of the twelfth century as the state temple of the Khmer king Suryavarman II and was dedicated to Vishnu. It was gradually converted into a Buddhist site after the late twelfth century, later as a Theravada temple, and it is in religious use today. It stands just north of Siem Reap in Cambodia.

Why does Angkor Wat face west?

Angkor Wat faces west, unlike most Khmer temples, which face east. Scholars including Maurice Glaize and George Coedes, as Wikipedia reports, suggested this meant Suryavarman II intended it as his funerary temple. The effect for visitors is that the sun rises behind Angkor Wat’s towers when seen from the western causeway.

Is Angkor Wat still a religious site?

Yes. Angkor Wat has been a Buddhist temple for centuries, and Wikipedia records that it was never completely abandoned; it is used for worship today. The Angkor visitor code of conduct asks visitors to cover shoulders and knees, keep quiet, not touch the carvings, and show consideration for monks and people at prayer.

Which border areas does the U.S. State Department advisory for Cambodia name?

The U.S. State Department has Cambodia at Level 2, exercise increased caution, because of crime, unrest and unexploded ordnance (advisory of 15 September 2026). It says not to travel to areas along the Cambodian and Thai border because of unrest. Angkor Wat lies about 100 km from the nearest stretch of that border. The advisory also asks for increased caution in Siem Reap province because of unexploded ordnance.

Do you need a ticket to visit Angkor Wat?

Yes. Entry to Angkor Wat and the Angkor park is by Angkor Pass, sold by the Cambodian state body Angkor Enterprise through its official website and ticket counters. Children under 12 do not need a ticket. Angkor Enterprise publishes the current passes and prices, which should be checked before travel.

What is the Churning of the Sea of Milk at Angkor Wat?

It is a bas-relief on the southern section of the east gallery of Angkor Wat, showing devas (gods) and asuras (demons) pulling on the serpent Vasuki to churn the sea of milk under Vishnu’s direction. Wikipedia counts 92 asuras and 88 devas; the scholar Eleanor Mannikka counts 91 asuras and reads the numbers as calendrical.

How big is Angkor Wat?

Wikipedia gives the Angkor Wat site as 162.6 hectares, enclosed by an outer wall 1,024 by 802 metres and a moat 190 metres wide and more than five kilometres in perimeter. The central tower rises 65 metres above the ground. Guinness World Records lists Angkor Wat as the largest religious structure in the world.