Angkor Wat is a 12th-century stone temple near the town of Siem Reap in northern Cambodia, built by the Khmer Empire.
The temple of Angkor Wat is one of the Man Made Wonders of the World, and is the centrepiece of Angkor, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that UNESCO describes as one of the most important archaeological sites in South-East Asia. A white outline of Angkor Wat appears at the centre of the national flag of Cambodia.
Angkor Wat is in Siem Reap province, northern Cambodia, about 6 km (4 mi) north of Siem Reap town.
Angkor Wat stands in the south of the Angkor Archaeological Park, which covers about 400 sq km (154 sq mi). The Angkor park contains the remains of the capitals of the Khmer Empire from the 9th to the 15th century, according to UNESCO.
The South Gate of Angkor Thom, the walled city built after Angkor Wat, is 1.7 km (1.1 mi) north of Angkor Wat's west entrance.
The following ways of travelling reach Angkor Wat from Siem Reap and its airport.
To get to Angkor Wat from Bangkok, fly to Siem Reap Angkor International Airport, a flight of about 1 hour to 1 hour 20 minutes.
Bangkok Airways and Thai AirAsia fly to Siem Reap from Bangkok's two airports, Suvarnabhumi (BKK) and Don Mueang (DMK).
The land border between Thailand and Cambodia has been closed since June 2025, after fighting between the two countries. The border closure includes the Poipet crossing, on the old overland route from Bangkok to Siem Reap. The Thai and Cambodian governments have not set a date to reopen the border crossings.
To get to Angkor Wat from Phnom Penh, take a bus or fly to Siem Reap, the nearest town to the temple.
Buses from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap take 5 to 7 hours. Giant Ibis runs daytime buses for about USD 17 to 25. Larryta Express and Seila Angkor run cheaper buses, at about USD 15.
Flights from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap take about 50 to 55 minutes, the quickest way from the Cambodian capital to Angkor Wat.
Angkor Wat was part of a large Khmer city. Greater Angkor, the city around Angkor Wat and the other Khmer temples, covered about 1,000 sq km (386 sq mi), according to lidar, airborne laser scans that map the ground beneath the forest.
Angkor Wat was built in the first half of the 12th century, which makes the temple about 900 years old.
The dates of Angkor Wat come from the reign of King Suryavarman II, the Khmer king who ordered the temple. Suryavarman II reigned from 1112 to 1152, according to the Smithsonian, a year or two either side of Britannica's dates.
Some of the carvings at Angkor Wat are much younger than the temple. Inscriptions dated 1546 and 1564 record that a later Khmer king, possibly Ang Chan, finished the two bas-relief panels in the northeast corner of the temple's outer gallery.
The Khmer people built Angkor Wat for King Suryavarman II, ruler of the Khmer Empire.
Building Angkor Wat took a workforce of about 25,000 people, according to archaeologists who mapped the temple grounds with lidar (Evans and Fletcher, 2015).
The 2015 lidar survey also found a grid of streets and ponds inside the walls of Angkor Wat, with room for more than 4,500 people to live around the temple.
Angkor Wat was built as a temple to Vishnu, the Hindu god, and probably also as the funeral temple of King Suryavarman II, according to National Geographic.
The original name of Angkor Wat, Vrah Vishnuloka, means "sacred dwelling of Vishnu".
Angkor Wat faces west, while most temples at Angkor face east. A west-facing entrance is typical of funeral monuments in India and Java, according to the Dutch scholar F. D. K. Bosch, quoted in Maurice Glaize's 1944 guide to the Angkor temples. Other scholars disagree about why Angkor Wat faces west.
Angkor Wat was built from sandstone blocks cut from quarries at the foot of Phnom Kulen, a range of hills about 35 km (22 mi) northeast of the temple, and carried to the site along canals (Uchida and Shimoda, 2013).
The 2013 study of the Angkor sandstone found more than 50 quarry sites along the canal route. The Angkor sandstone was earlier thought to have travelled about 90 km (56 mi) by river.
Angkor Wat contains 5 million to 10 million sandstone blocks, each weighing up to 1,500 kg (3,300 lb), according to reports of the quarry study.
The outer enclosure of Angkor Wat is a high wall of laterite, a reddish, iron-rich stone.
Angkor Wat is both Hindu and Buddhist. The temple of Angkor Wat was dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu, and has been a Buddhist temple since the 14th century.
Cambodia turned to Theravada Buddhism at the start of the 14th century. In the same period, Khmer inscriptions in Pali, the language of Theravada scriptures, replaced inscriptions in Sanskrit.
Buddhist monks walled in the doorways of the central sanctuary of Angkor Wat, after removing the Hindu statue that stood inside.
Angkor Wat has been in religious use ever since the change to Buddhism. Local people still perform ceremonies at the temple today, according to UNESCO.
Angkor Wat was not fully abandoned. Buddhist monks stayed on at Angkor Wat after the Khmer kings left Angkor in the 15th century.
The Khmer court left Angkor after the Thai kingdom of Ayutthaya laid siege to the city in 1431, and moved south towards Phnom Penh.
The decline of Angkor began about a century before the 1431 siege. The canals and reservoirs of Angkor failed after the city's ruling class had already moved away, according to a 2019 study of the city's water system (Penny et al., 2019).
Angkor Wat was not lost, so the story of its discovery is a myth. Foreign visitors reached Angkor Wat centuries before Henri Mouhot, the French explorer often credited with finding the temple.
António da Madalena, a Portuguese friar, is the first European known to have seen Angkor Wat, in about 1586. Diogo do Couto, a Portuguese historian, wrote down da Madalena's account of the temple.
Japanese pilgrims visited Angkor Wat in the 17th century and left 14 inscriptions on the temple walls, dated between 1612 and 1632. A Japanese visitor drew the first known map of Angkor in the same century.
Henri Mouhot, a French naturalist, made Angkor Wat famous in Europe in the 1860s. Mouhot visited Angkor in late 1859 or early 1860, according to different accounts, and died in Laos in 1861. Mouhot's travel journals, published after his death, described Angkor Wat to readers in France and Britain.
Angkor Wat has been restored by French, Indian, Japanese, German, and Cambodian teams since the early 20th century.
The French School of the Far East (EFEO) set up the Angkor Conservation office in 1908. EFEO workers cleared the forest from Angkor Wat between 1908 and 1911.
Restoration at Angkor Wat stopped in the early 1970s, when Cambodia's civil war reached Angkor. The Khmer Rouge used the Angkor temples as a military stronghold in the late 1970s. Fighting left one Angkor Wat gateway half-collapsed and holes in the walls, and looters stole many statues. By 1981, about 15 figures were left in the Gallery of a Thousand Buddhas at Angkor Wat.
The Archaeological Survey of India restored Angkor Wat from 1986 to 1993. Critics of the Indian restoration objected to the chemicals and cement used on the stone.
Angkor was on the UNESCO List of World Heritage in Danger from 1992 to 2004. The APSARA National Authority, the Cambodian body that manages the Angkor park, has looked after Angkor Wat since 1995, alongside foreign teams such as the German Apsara Conservation Project.
Angkor Wat is a stepped pyramid of three levels with five towers on top, surrounded by a walled enclosure and a moat.
Angkor Wat covers 162.6 ha (402 acres), according to Guinness World Records.
The moat and grounds of Angkor Wat measure about 1.5 km (0.9 mi) by 1.3 km (0.8 mi), according to the APSARA National Authority. The moat around Angkor Wat is 190 m (623 ft) wide and about 5.5 km (3.4 mi) long.
Inside the moat, the outer wall of Angkor Wat encloses an area of 1,025 m (3,363 ft) by 800 m (2,625 ft). The outer gallery of the temple measures 187 m (614 ft) by 215 m (705 ft).
The central tower of Angkor Wat stands 42 m (138 ft) high on top of the temple's three levels, and reaches 62 m (203 ft) above the western causeway at the main entrance.
Angkor Wat represents Mount Meru, the mountain home of the gods in Hindu belief.
The five towers of Angkor Wat stand for the five peaks of Mount Meru. The moat around Angkor Wat stands for the oceans that surround the world.
Inside Angkor Wat are galleries of carved stone, courtyards and shrines, rising in three levels to the central sanctuary.
Angkor Wat contains the following main spaces, from the outer gallery inwards.
A walk from the gallery of bas-reliefs up to the Bakan passes through every main space of Angkor Wat.
The main sights of Angkor Wat run from the western causeway, across the moat, to the Bakan at the top of the temple.
Angkor Thom, the Bayon and Ta Prohm, the nearest of the other great Angkor temples, stand within about 3 km (1.9 mi) of Angkor Wat.
The western causeway is the 350 m (1,148 ft) stone path that crosses the moat to the main entrance of Angkor Wat, 9.4 m (31 ft) wide.
Stone balustrades carved as nagas, the many-headed serpents of Khmer myth, run along the edges of the western causeway.
A team from Sophia University in Tokyo restored a 200 m (656 ft) stretch of the western causeway between 2016 and 2023, with Japanese government funding.
The gallery of bas-reliefs is the outer gallery of Angkor Wat, whose inner wall is carved with scenes 2 m (6.6 ft) high, covering more than 1,000 sq m (10,764 sq ft).
The best-known panel in the gallery of bas-reliefs is the Churning of the Ocean of Milk, a carving 49 m (161 ft) long. The Churning of the Ocean of Milk shows gods and demons pulling on a giant serpent to churn the ocean and bring up the nectar of immortality.
The other panels in the gallery of bas-reliefs include the following scenes.
The World Monuments Fund replaced the roof over the Churning of the Ocean of Milk gallery between 2006 and 2013.
The apsaras and devatas of Angkor Wat are carvings of female divinities on the walls of the temple.
The dancing or flying figures at Angkor Wat are apsaras, celestial dancers, and the standing figures are devatas, according to art historians.
Angkor Wat has 1,796 carved devatas, according to the Devata Database Project. The French artist Sappho Marchal counted 1,737 devatas at Angkor Wat in 1927.
The Bakan is the central sanctuary at the top of Angkor Wat, reached by a single flight of stone stairs at a slope of about 70 degrees.
The Bakan opens from about 7:30 am to 5 pm. Children under 12 are banned from the Bakan stairs.
Visitors climb to the Bakan in groups of up to 100 at a time. On Buddhist holy days, the Bakan closes to tourists.
Angkor Thom is the walled city of King Jayavarman VII, built in the late 12th century and covering 9 sq km (3.5 sq mi), with the Bayon temple at its centre.
The square wall of Angkor Thom runs 3 km (1.9 mi) along each side. Five gates 23 m (75 ft) high lead into Angkor Thom, each gate topped with four giant carved faces. The causeways to the gates are lined with 54 stone gods on one side and 54 demons on the other.
The Bayon is the temple at the centre of Angkor Thom, built at the end of the 12th century and known for the huge stone faces carved on its towers. Only 37 towers of the Bayon still stand, out of an original 49 or 54, according to APSARA.
The Terrace of the Elephants, a platform in Angkor Thom 300 m (984 ft) long, held the king's reception pavilion for parades and public events.
Ta Prohm is a Buddhist monastery temple overgrown by giant trees, built by King Jayavarman VII and consecrated in 1186, 3 km (1.9 mi) northeast of Angkor Wat.
Jayavarman VII dedicated Ta Prohm to his mother, whom the king linked with the main statue of the temple, a figure of Prajnaparamita, the Buddhist goddess of wisdom.
The trees of Ta Prohm, mostly silk-cotton and fig trees, were left growing out of the walls and roofs on purpose when the Angkor temples were cleared and restored.
Ta Prohm needed almost 80,000 people to run it, including more than 2,700 officials and 615 dancers.
Phnom Bakheng is a temple on a hill about 60 m (197 ft) high, 1.3 km (0.8 mi) from Angkor Wat.
King Yasovarman I dedicated the Phnom Bakheng temple around 907. The Phnom Bakheng temple has 109 small shrines on its terraces.
Phnom Bakheng is a sunset viewpoint, open until 7 pm, with a limit of 300 visitors at the top at any one time. The 300 places at the top of Phnom Bakheng are often full by 4 pm in the busy season.
Children under 12 and pregnant women are banned from climbing to the top of Phnom Bakheng.
Banteay Srei is a small Hindu temple of pink sandstone, begun in 967, about 32 km (20 mi) northeast of Siem Reap.
Banteay Srei was built by a Brahmin, a Hindu priest, who served as tutor to King Jayavarman V.
The Angkor Pass for visiting Angkor Wat also covers Banteay Srei.
A visit to Angkor Wat starts with an Angkor Pass, which covers Angkor Wat and the other temples of the Angkor park. Staff scan the Angkor Pass at a checkpoint at each temple.
The best time of year to visit Angkor Wat is November to February, the dry season, with the coolest nights of the year.
November to February brings daytime highs of 30°C (86°F) to 34°C (93°F) at Angkor Wat. December and January are the driest months, with 7 mm (0.3 in) and 1 mm (0.04 in) of rain. Early November usually brings good weather, with about 61 mm (2.4 in) of rain in the month as the wet season ends.
March to May is the hot season at Angkor Wat, with highs of 34°C (93°F) to 36°C (97°F). April is the hottest month.
The wet season at Angkor Wat runs from May to October, when each month brings 146 mm (5.7 in) to 250 mm (9.8 in) of rain. September is the wettest month.
November to February is also the busiest season for tourists at Angkor Wat.
To see the sunrise at Angkor Wat, arrive at the west entrance when the gate opens, and watch from the edge of the two ponds in front of the temple.
Sunrise at Angkor Wat comes at about 5:30 am from May to July, 6 am from August to December, and 6:30 am from January to April.
The north pond, on the left of the path, gives the classic view of the five towers of Angkor Wat reflected in the water, and draws the biggest crowd. The south pond, on the right, has far fewer people. If you have a guide with you at dawn, ask the guide to pick a quieter viewing spot along the water, away from the crowd at the north pond.
Watching the sky light up behind the towers of Angkor Wat is an awe-inspiring sight, and well worth the very early start.
On the March and September equinoxes, the sun rises directly over the central tower of Angkor Wat, seen from the west end of the causeway. The equinox sunrises are the most crowded mornings of the year at Angkor Wat.
The best time of day to visit Angkor Wat is straight after sunrise, when most of the sunrise crowd leaves the temple for breakfast.
Midday is the next quietest time inside Angkor Wat, when the tour groups leave for lunch. Midday is also the hottest part of the day.
Late afternoon brings fewer people to Angkor Wat, as visitors leave for the sunset viewpoints at Phnom Bakheng and Pre Rup. Pre Rup is a 10th-century temple about 5 km (3.1 mi) northeast of Angkor Wat, with a sunset view over rice fields.
Allow at least 3 hours at Angkor Wat, or half a day to see every corner of the temple.
One day is enough for Angkor Wat and the Small Circuit, a 17 km (10.6 mi) loop that also takes in Angkor Thom, the Bayon and Ta Prohm.
Three days give time for the Grand Circuit, a 26 km (16.2 mi) loop past Preah Khan, Neak Pean, Ta Som, East Mebon and Pre Rup, and for watching sunrise and sunset on different days.
Visiting Angkor Wat costs USD 37 for a 1-day Angkor Pass.
The 3-day Angkor Pass is valid on any 3 days within 7 days. The 7-day Angkor Pass is valid on any 7 days within 30 days.
Children under 12 enter Angkor Wat free, with a passport to prove their age.
A 1-day Angkor Pass bought after 4:45 pm also lets you in that evening for the sunset, and then for the whole of the next day.
Beng Mealea, Koh Ker and Kbal Spean, three sites farther from Siem Reap, need separate tickets, at USD 10, USD 15 and USD 5.
To buy Angkor Wat tickets, book online at angkorenterprise.gov.kh, the only official Angkor Pass website, or buy at the Angkor ticket office in Siem Reap.
Checkpoint staff at Angkor Wat accept the QR code of an online Angkor Pass on your phone.
The Angkor ticket office stands on Road 60, about 4 km (2.5 mi) from the centre of Siem Reap and about 15 minutes from the temples. The ticket office closes at 5:30 pm. Self-service ticket machines also stand at the west entrance of Angkor Wat and at the Heritage Walk mall in Siem Reap.
The ticket office and machines take Visa, Mastercard, UnionPay, JCB, Diners Club and Discover cards.
The 3-day and 7-day Angkor Passes carry a photo of the pass holder. The 1-day Angkor Pass does not need a photo.
Angkor Wat's opening hours are 5 am to 6 pm every day, with an early opening for sunrise.
Visitors already inside Angkor Wat at closing time get 30 extra minutes to leave.
Most other temples in the Angkor park open at 6 am and close between 6 pm and 6:30 pm, according to different published timetables. Pre Rup, Phnom Bakheng and Phnom Krom stay open until 7 pm for the sunset.
Wear clothes that cover your shoulders and knees to Angkor Wat, under the dress code for the Angkor temples.
The Angkor dress code has been in place since 2016, and asks for trousers or skirts below the knee and tops that cover the shoulders. Temple staff check clothing mostly at the foot of the steep stairs, such as the stairs to the Bakan.
The Bakan at Angkor Wat needs a top with sleeves. A scarf over bare shoulders is not enough to climb to the Bakan.
Wear closed shoes with a good grip, because the stone stairs at Angkor Wat are steep and uneven, and slippery after rain.
No, Angkor Wat does not require a guided tour, but a guide for the first morning is worth the cost.
Hire a guide for the sunrise and a walk through the galleries of Angkor Wat, then explore the rest of the temple on your own.
Private guides at Angkor cost about USD 35 to 50 for a half day and USD 60 to 100 for a full day. Group sunrise tours cost about USD 23 to 28 per person, plus the Angkor Pass.
Licensed Angkor guides wear an official uniform and badge.
Use the following travel tips to get the most out of a visit to Angkor Wat.
Visitors to Angkor Wat stay in Siem Reap, a lively town that feels safe and friendly, with hotels from hostel dormitories to a grand hotel of the 1930s.
The bars along Pub Street, a 100 m (328 ft) strip of bars and restaurants in the centre of Siem Reap that closes to traffic at night, are a good place to relax after a day at the temples.
The following budget places to stay in Siem Reap cost under USD 50 a night.
The following mid-range hotels in Siem Reap cost about USD 50 to 150 a night.
The following luxury hotels in Siem Reap cost from about USD 120 a night.
Angkor Wat is pronounced ANG-kor WAHT, with the stress on the first syllable of Angkor, according to Merriam-Webster.
Angkor Wat means "City Temple". Angkor comes from nagara, the Sanskrit word for city.
Wat is the word for a Buddhist temple or monastery in Cambodia and Thailand, from the Sanskrit vāṭa, meaning enclosed ground. Some sources translate Angkor Wat as "city of temples".
Yes, Angkor Wat is on the list of Man-Made Wonders of the World, compiled by the American writer Howard Hillman. Angkor Wat is 14th of the Top 100 Hillman Wonders of the World.
Angkor was one of the 21 finalists for the New Seven Wonders of the World in 2007, but was not among the seven winners.
Yes, Angkor Wat is the largest religious structure ever built, according to Guinness World Records.
Angkor Wat covers more ground than Vatican City, the smallest country in the world, which covers 44 ha (109 acres).
Angkor Wat is on the Cambodian flag because the temple has stood for Cambodia on official emblems since at least about 1847, when Angkor Wat appeared on a coin struck under King Ang Duong.
The flag of Cambodia shows Angkor Wat in white, the colour of purity, at the centre of a red band twice as wide as the blue band above and below. The current Cambodian flag was adopted in 1948, dropped in 1970, and adopted again in 1993, when the monarchy returned.
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) and In the Mood for Love (2000) are the best-known films shot at Angkor Wat.
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider was filmed at Angkor Wat, Ta Prohm, the Bayon, Phnom Bakheng and the East Gate of Angkor Thom over about a week, with Paramount paying the APSARA Authority USD 10,000 a day. The tree at Ta Prohm where Angelina Jolie's character picks a jasmine flower is now known as the Tomb Raider tree.
In the Mood for Love, by the Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai, ends at Angkor Wat, where the main character whispers a secret into a hole in a temple wall and seals the hole with mud.
No, Angkor Wat does not have a dinosaur carving. The carving often called a stegosaurus is at Ta Prohm, and most likely shows a rhinoceros or a boar.
The Ta Prohm carving shows an animal with a row of plates along its back, which led to claims that the Khmer saw living dinosaurs. The plates are most likely leaves or decoration behind the animal, according to the Smithsonian, and some writers suggest the Ta Prohm carving is a modern fake.
Yes, long-tailed macaques live at Angkor Wat and around the other Angkor temples.
The Angkor monkeys sometimes bite visitors and grab food. The APSARA National Authority warns visitors against feeding the monkeys or posing for photos with them. Keep food out of sight when you walk past the monkeys at Angkor Wat.
In 2024, Cambodia's agriculture ministry announced a plan to count the Angkor monkeys and move the most aggressive ones away from the temples.
About 1 million foreign visitors a year buy Angkor Passes to visit Angkor Wat and the wider Angkor park.
Foreign visitors to the Angkor park numbered a little over 1 million in 2024, and fell by 6.7% in 2025.
Visitor numbers at Angkor fell further after the 2025 border fighting between Cambodia and Thailand. From January to August 2026, 474,933 foreign visitors bought Angkor Passes, 30% fewer than in the same months of 2025.
Yes, Angkor Wat is safe to visit. Siem Reap and the Angkor temples lie outside the areas near the Thai border that travel advisories warn against.
The US State Department rates Cambodia at Level 2, exercise increased caution, and advises against travel within 50 km (31 mi) of the border with Thailand. The UK Foreign Office advises against all but essential travel within 20 km (12 mi) of the Thai border.
The US State Department also lists Siem Reap province among the Cambodian provinces with unexploded ordnance, such as old bombs and shells, left from past wars. Stay on marked paths when you visit the more remote temples outside the main Angkor park.
Angkor Wat is a single temple, and Angkor Thom is a walled city with many temples inside its walls, including the Bayon.
Angkor Thom dates from a few decades after Angkor Wat, and stands just to the north of Angkor Wat. One Angkor Pass covers Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom.
Yes, Angkor Wat is very much worth visiting, even on a single day as part of a longer trip through Southeast Asia.
A visit to Angkor Wat is easy and hassle-free, with Siem Reap only a short tuk-tuk ride from the temple.