Siem Reap travel guide

Top 10 sights in Siem Reap

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   1© The original uploader was Fuzheado at English Wikipedia. · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Angkor Wat

   The largest religious monument in the world, built for Suryavarman II from about 1113 and enclosing more than a hundred and sixty hectares. It faces west, which is unusual, and its galleries carry eight hundred metres of relief including the churning of the sea of milk.

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   2© Manfred Werner (talk · contribs) · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Angkor

   The capital of the Khmer empire from the ninth century to the fifteenth, spread over four hundred square kilometres with something like a thousand temples in it. At its height it may have been the largest pre-industrial city on earth.

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   3© Charles J Sharp · CC BY 2.5

   Angkor Thom

   The last Khmer capital, laid out by Jayavarman VII around 1200 — nine square kilometres inside walls eight metres high and a moat a hundred metres wide. Its five gates are approached over causeways of gods and demons hauling on a serpent.

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   4© Trusty Tuk Tuk · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Bayon

   Jayavarman VII's state temple at the centre of Angkor Thom, carrying two hundred-odd serene faces on fifty-four towers. Its lower galleries are carved with markets, cockfights and a naval battle against the Cham, which is rarer than the faces.

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   5© Jean-Pierre Dalbéra from Paris, France · CC BY 2.0

   Baphuon

   A temple mountain of the mid eleventh century dedicated to Shiva. French restorers took it apart in the 1960s to rebuild it; the records were lost in the war years, and the three hundred thousand blocks were not reassembled until 2011.

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   6© Dmitry A. Mottl · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Ta Prohm

   A temple of 1186 that the French deliberately left in the state they found it, with silk-cotton and fig roots prising the galleries apart. It is the most photographed ruin at Angkor and the most fragile.

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   7© Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Banteay Kdei

   A Buddhist temple of the late twelfth century built for Jayavarman VII, laid out like Ta Prohm and Preah Khan but smaller and simpler. It is lightly restored and usually quiet, which is its argument.

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   Preah Ko

   The first temple built at Hariharalaya, dedicated in 879 by Indravarman I to his ancestors — six brick towers on one terrace, still carrying much of their carved stucco. The name comes from the sandstone bulls kneeling in front.

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   9© Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Preah Khan

   A temple city of 1191 built by Jayavarman VII where he had beaten the Cham, and dedicated to his father. It housed nearly a hundred thousand officials and attendants; today it is a long corridor of collapsing galleries with few visitors in it.

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    10© The original uploader was RichardSocher at English Wikipedia. · CC BY 2.5

    Banteay Samré

    A temple of the early twelfth century in Angkor Wat style, four hundred metres east of the East Baray. Its enclosed courtyard and steep roofs survive unusually intact, and it sees a fraction of the traffic of the main group.

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   1© Ziegler175 · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Yasodharapura

   The capital Yasovarman I founded in the late ninth century, centred on the hill temple of Phnom Bakheng. Inscriptions call it the middle mountain; the name was reused for the Khmer capital for centuries afterwards.

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   2© Helt · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Phnom Bakheng

   A temple mountain of 907 on a hill between Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom, built as the state temple when the capital moved here. It is climbed for the sunset over Angkor Wat, with numbers capped at the top.

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   Hariharalaya

   The ninth-century Khmer capital in the area now called Roluos, southeast of Angkor. Of the city itself nothing remains but three royal temples — Preah Ko, Bakong and Lolei — standing among rice fields.

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   4© Culexx · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Bakong

   The state temple of Hariharalaya, consecrated in 881 and the earliest sandstone temple mountain the Khmers built — a stepped pyramid of five tiers with brick towers around the base. Everything at Angkor descends from this experiment.

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   5© Tajai https://www.flickr.com/people/cayce/ · CC BY 2.0

   Neak Pean

   A small temple on a circular island in a reservoir, its base ringed by two serpents whose tails entwine. Four linked pools around it were used for ritual bathing, and it stood beside one of Jayavarman VII's hospitals.

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   6© Gabriella Clare Marino Gcmarino · CC BY-SA 3.0

   West Baray

   A reservoir of about eight kilometres by two, dug by hand in the eleventh century and the largest at Angkor. It still holds some fifty million cubic metres of water, which is why the ruin of the temple on its island is reached by boat.

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   7© DARIO SEVERI · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Baray

   The rectangular reservoirs that are a defining element of Khmer building, dug without stone linings and fed by canals. Whether they were mainly for irrigation or for the symbolism of the cosmic ocean has been argued for a century.

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   8© Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Pre Rup

   The state temple of Rajendravarman, dedicated in 961, built of laterite and brick that hold the light at the end of the day. Its name means turning the body, after a cremation rite once performed at its foot.

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   Ta Keo

   A temple mountain begun in the late tenth century and possibly the first the Khmers built entirely of sandstone. Work stopped before the carvers began, so its five towers stand bare — which shows the construction more clearly than any finished temple.

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    10© Olaf Tausch · CC BY 3.0

    Terrace of the Leper King

    A terrace in the royal square of Angkor Thom, named after a statue long taken for a king with leprosy and probably Yama, the judge of the dead. A hidden inner wall, uncovered by restorers, carries carvings that were never meant to be seen.

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