Heritage site

Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat (អង្គរវត្ត, Angkor Wat) is a 12th-century temple in Siem Reap province, Cambodia, built for Vishnu and a center of Buddhist worship for centuries.[1] It stands within the Angkor archaeological park and appears on the national flag of Cambodia.[2]

Five sandstone towers of Angkor Wat rising behind palm trees, mirrored in a still pool under a blue sky.
The central towers of Angkor Wat seen across the western reflecting pool, 2017.

History

The name joins angkor, from a Sanskrit word for a holy city, and wat, the Khmer word for a temple. It is given as "City of the Temple."[1][3] The temple's original name is not securely known because surviving contemporary texts and inscriptions do not mention it by name. Its first name may have been Vrah Vishnulok, after its presiding god.[1]

King Suryavarman II built Angkor Wat as his state temple and capital, dedicated to Vishnu.[1] Maurice Glaize, in his 1944 guide to Angkor, placed the temple in the southeast corner of Yasodharapura, the older city built by Yasovarman I around Phnom Bakheng.[4] It may have been begun as a funerary temple.[3] Suryavarman II took the throne in 1113 after killing his great-uncle, King Dharanindravarman I. He built a strong central government, opened relations with China and regarded Vishnu as his personal protector.[3] The temple was built during his reign, between about 1113 and 1150.[1][5] Work stopped after Suryavarman II died, and some of the relief carving was left unfinished.[1]

In 1177 the Cham people, from what is now Vietnam, sacked Angkor. Jayavarman VII, who reigned from 1181 to about 1220, built Angkor Thom nearby as a new capital with the Bayon as its state temple.[1] Hindu worship at the temple gave way gradually to Theravada Buddhism from the late 13th century, with Buddhist monks taking it over.[1][3] From then on Angkor Wat served as a Buddhist center, as it does to the present day.[1]

Angkor was abandoned as a capital in 1431, but Buddhist monks stayed on at the temple.[5][3] The temple has always held Buddhist pagodas and has long been a place of pilgrimage for Khmer people.[4] It was neglected after the 16th century but never completely abandoned, and its moat held back the forest.[1][3] Between 1546 and 1564, King Chan Reachea had new reliefs carved in the unfinished northern and eastern galleries.[6] These two reliefs are more roughly carved than the others, and their sculptors drew on Siamese art of the early Ayutthaya period.[5][6] In the late 16th century his grandson, King Sattha, moved to Angkor and left inscriptions at Angkor Wat dedicated to Theravada Buddhism.[6]

The French explorer Henri Mouhot visited around 1860, and his interest in the temple made it widely known in the West.[3] French conservation began at Angkor Wat in 1908 under Jean Commaille. The French wanted to return the temple to its Hindu form, and took away many Buddha images that Cambodians had set in its rooms and galleries. In 1909 Commaille's workers opened the walled-up central shrine to look for a Vishnu statue, and found only fragments of Buddha images.[7]

Cambodia became independent from France on November 9, 1953, and has controlled Angkor Wat since then.[1] Restoration stopped during the political unrest of the 1970s, through the civil war and the Khmer Rouge years. The main damage in that period was the theft and destruction of statues, mostly from after the Angkor era.[1] In 1986 the Archaeological Survey of India began restoring the temple and redid much of the earlier French work.[8] Since the 1990s, the Cambodian government and its foreign partners have carried out restoration and conservation projects at the site.[2][1]

Architecture and layout

The complex covers about 162.6 hectares (402 acres).[3] Guinness World Records lists it as the largest religious structure in the world.[9] Glaize gave its outer rectangle, moat included, as about 1,500 by 1,300 meters (4,900 by 4,300 feet).[4] Maurice Glaize, in his 1944 guide to Angkor, gave the central tower a height of 42 meters (138 feet), with its top 62 meters (203 feet) above the main causeway.[4] A 2025 structural study uses a height of about 40 meters (131 feet) for the tower.[10] Unlike most temples at Angkor, it faces west, a direction linked with Vishnu and the land of the dead.[3]

A steep stone stairway climbing to the central gallery of Angkor Wat, flanked by two towers.
The central sanctuary of Angkor Wat, with its steep stairway and corner towers, 2013.

The temple combines the Khmer temple-mountain, a stepped temple built as a sacred mountain, with rings of galleries one inside the other, creating a layered plan.[1] Its layout is commonly read as a model of Mount Meru, where the gods live.[1] Glaize wrote that the Englishman Thomson took the temple in 1866 as a symbol of Meru, the mountain at the center of the universe. In Thomson's reading, the seven rings of the central tower matched the seven mountain chains of Meru, and the moat filled with water stood for the ocean.[4] The plan has nine towers: the central tower, four at the corners of the inner enclosure and four at the corners of the middle enclosure.[10] The towers rise in four tiers that grow smaller toward the top, with three rows of lotus petals.[4] Glaize likened their outline to a cone-shaped tiara and described the corner towers of the second enclosure as truncated.[4] Hinduism Today wrote in 1993 that four of the nine towers were gone.[8]

A moat about 200 meters (650 feet) wide and 4 meters (13 feet) deep runs more than 5 kilometers (3 miles) around the complex.[3] A sandstone causeway crosses it on the west.[4] At its western end, a cross-shaped terrace raised a few steps above the road and set with stone lions leads onto the causeway. Naga balustrades, railings carved as many-headed serpents, line the edges of both.[4][11] Glaize and Sophia University give the causeway's length as about 200 meters (660 feet).[4][12] Xinhua gave 192 meters (630 feet) at the causeway's reopening in 2023.[11] The causeway has fallen in several times over its history, and it has been repaired again and again.[12] Its modern restoration took 19 years, in two stages. Japanese specialists led the first, from 1996 to 2007. In the second, from 2016 to 2023, Cambodian and Japanese experts worked together, with Sophia University as a partner.[13][12] The causeway reopened on November 4, 2023.[13][11] Inside the outer wall, a raised causeway about 350 meters (1,150 feet) long leads from the western entrance to the temple, Glaize wrote.[4] The outer enclosure once held the city and, north of the temple, the royal palace. These were built of materials that did not last, and only the outlines of some streets remain.[1]

The visible parts of Angkor Wat are mainly sandstone, while laterite, an iron-rich stone, was used for the outer wall and hidden supports.[1] The sandstone came from the Kulen Hills, about 29 kilometers (18 miles) to the north, and was moved to the site by canal.[3] The central temple stands on a raised terrace. Three galleries rise one above the other toward a central sanctuary marked by five stone towers.[1] Movement toward the upper levels became more and more restricted, so ordinary worshippers were admitted only to the lowest level.[1]

Preah Poan, known as the Hall of a Thousand Buddhas, is a cross-shaped cloister linking the outer gallery to the second level, with libraries to its north and south. The inner gallery, called the Bakan, holds the central shrine. The shrine once housed a statue of Vishnu and was open on each side; when the temple became Theravada Buddhist, it was walled in, and the new walls bear standing Buddhas.[1] A large eight-armed statue of Vishnu stands at the western entrance.[3]

Art and inscriptions

Angkor Wat has more than 2,000 square meters (21,500 square feet) of bas-reliefs, carvings raised from a flat stone surface. Eight large reliefs in the gallery around the first level cover about 1,200 square meters (12,900 square feet).[5] The outer gallery runs more than 600 meters (1,960 feet), and its scenes are read counterclockwise.[3] The western gallery holds two battles from the epics: the Battle of Kurukshetra, from the Mahabharata, and the Battle of Lanka, from the Ramayana. The southern gallery shows a procession of Suryavarman II and the 37 heavens and 32 hells of Hindu belief. The northern gallery holds Krishna's defeat of Bana and a fight between the gods and the asuras, or demons.[1] Some carvings show Suryavarman II as Vishnu or carrying out his duties as king.[3]

A long sandstone gallery with a carved female figure on the near pillar and a tower at the far end.
A gallery of Angkor Wat with carved female figures on its walls, 2013.

The Battle of Kurukshetra fills a single panel. The Kaurava army advances from the left and the Pandava army from the right, and only at the center does the fighting close into a dense melee. Along the base runs a procession of musicians, foot soldiers and leaders riding elephants or chariots pulled by horses.[4][5] On the right of the panel, the hero Arjuna rides in a chariot driven by a four-armed Krishna. On the left, Glaize identified Bhisma, the commander of the Kaurava army, dying pierced with arrows.[4]

Unlike the Hindu myths on the other great reliefs, the procession of Suryavarman II in the southern gallery shows a historical scene: the king himself, his court and his army.[4][5] The panel opens with a royal audience, with the king seated on his throne above a procession of palace women. His commanders then come down to join their troops. Standing on elephants, they surround the king, who is carved larger than the others. The number of parasols around each commander marks his rank, and the king has 15.[4] The procession also includes a contingent known as the Syam Kuk. Who these soldiers were is debated. Maurice Glaize, in his 1944 guide to Angkor, described them as Siamese, then allies of the Khmer.[4] Bernard-Philippe Groslier's study of the figures, first published in French in 1981, asks whether they were Thai, Siamese or mercenaries, and also discusses the theory that they were Kuy.[14]

A major relief on the eastern gallery shows the Churning of the Ocean of Milk. There 92 asuras and 88 devas, or gods, use the serpent king Vasuki as a rope, while Vishnu occupies the center.[1] The churning produces the elixir of immortality, which the gods and the asuras fight over.[4] The same gallery holds a scene of Vishnu defeating the asuras that was added in the 16th century.[1]

Apsaras, celestial dancers, appear across large parts of the temple's walls.[5] Devatas, carved figures of deities, cover the walls from the second level upward, alone or in groups of up to four.[1] Inscriptions in Preah Poan record the good deeds of pilgrims in Khmer, Burmese and Japanese.[1]

Significance and conservation

Angkor Wat is a major religious, cultural and national symbol of Cambodia and a source of national pride.[1] Each year at the Visakha Bucha festival, over a thousand monks and nuns meet at the temple to meditate by candlelight.[7][1] It gives its name to the classical Angkor Wat style of Khmer architecture.[1] UNESCO inscribed the Angkor area, including the temple, on the World Heritage List in 1992 and added it the same year to the List of World Heritage in Danger. It was removed from that list in 2004.[2]

The international committee known as ICC-Angkor was set up on October 13, 1993 to coordinate restoration, conservation and research projects at Angkor. A royal decree of 1995 created the APSARA National Authority to protect the site and manage the Angkor region.[2] From 1999, Sokimex sold tickets to the Angkor Archaeological Park through its hotel arm, under a profit-sharing deal with APSARA. The government took over ticket sales on January 1, 2016.[15] The wider Angkor Archaeological Park covers about 400 square kilometers (154 square miles) and includes temples, water works and historic roads.[16]

A survey found about 20 percent of the temple's devatas in very poor condition, mainly from natural erosion and decay of the stone and partly from earlier restoration. Conservation work repairs collapsed sections and prevents further collapse.[1] Plants grew up the walls and into the cracks between the stones, and water seeping through the vaults has damaged some carvings.[3][4] In 2000, about 28 percent of ticket income from the Angkor site went to the temples, and most conservation was carried out by teams sponsored by foreign governments.[1]

Visiting

Angkor Wat lies about 5.5 kilometers (3.4 miles) north of Siem Reap.[1] The temple is reached by an earth bank on the east and, on the west, by the sandstone causeway that forms the main entrance. Visitors then pass through three galleries, each higher than the last.[1] Ropes and wooden steps protect the reliefs and floors.[1]

In 2018, about 2.59 million international visitors bought tickets to the Angkor Archaeological Park, which includes the temple. Cambodians enter free.[17] Government figures counted 561,000 foreign visitors to Siem Reap province in 2004 and 677,000 in 2005, about half of all foreign tourists to Cambodia.[1] The park received 287,454 international visitors in 2022 and 798,069 in 2023.[18]

References 18
  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 1.17 1.18 1.19 1.20 1.21 1.22 1.23 1.24 1.25 1.26 1.27 1.28 1.29 1.30 1.31 1.32 1.33 blogs.cornell.edu, Majestic Angkor Wat - CNI Master Class in Siem Reap (2011-02-26)
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 UNESCO World Heritage Centre
  3. ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 3.11 3.12 3.13 3.14 World History Encyclopedia, Angkor Wat (2020-02-13)
  4. ↑ 4.00 4.01 4.02 4.03 4.04 4.05 4.06 4.07 4.08 4.09 4.10 4.11 4.12 4.13 4.14 4.15 4.16 4.17 theangkorguide.com, Maurice Glaize, Angkor Wat, from The Monuments of the Angkor Group (1944; English translation)
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 Music in Art (Research Center for Music Iconography, City University of New York), Martin Knust, Urged to Interdisciplinary Approaches: The Iconography of Music on the Reliefs of Angkor Wat (2010)
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Sophia University Angkor International Mission, ANGKOR and I, pp. 108 to 109 (undated); Sophia University Angkor International Mission, ANGKOR and I, p. 109 (undated)
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Asia Times, John Burgess, Angkor in modern times (December 6, 2020)
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Hinduism Today, Fighting Time, Jungle and Bats to Recreate Angkor Wat (October 1993)
  9. ↑ Guinness World Records, Largest religious structure (undated)
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Sensors and Materials (MYU Tokyo), Vacharee Svamivastu and Komsan Maleesee, Study of Architectural Form and Structural Analysis of Central Tower Cluster of Angkor Wat (2025)
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 Xinhua, Cambodia inaugurates famed Angkor Wat temple's western causeway (November 4, 2023)
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 Sophia University, Restoration of the Western Causeway of Angkor Wat Completed; Completion Ceremony to be Held on November 4 (October 16, 2023)
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Asia News Network (The Phnom Penh Post), Orm Bunthoeurn, Angkor causeway symbol of Cambodia-Japan ties (November 7, 2023)
  14. ↑ Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia, Thailand and Cambodia: A Love-Hate Relationship (2003)
  15. ↑ The Phnom Penh Post (reprinted by Vietstock), Government takes over reins of Angkor ticket sales (January 5, 2016)
  16. ↑ whc.unesco.org, Angkor (2023-11-15)
  17. ↑ Southeast Asian Archaeology, Angkor hosts 2.6M visitors in 2018 (January 7, 2019)
  18. ↑ The Cambodia Daily (Xinhua), Cambodia's famous Angkor and tourism pride attracts nearly 800,000 foreign visitors in 2023 (January 3, 2024)
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This page was last edited on 9 November 2026, at 03:43.