Place trail · 10 stops
Angkor visitor route
Ten stops from the town to the lake. The route starts at Siem Reap, goes through Angkor Wat and the walled city of Angkor Thom to the temples of Jayavarman VII, then out to Banteay Srei and the older royal capital at Roluos, and ends on the Tonle Sap. Travel to Cambodia has the practical side of a visit.
Siem Reap
The city nearest the temples of Angkor, on a river that rises in the Kulen hills and ends in the Tonle Sap.
Angkor Wat
Built in the 12th century for Vishnu by Suryavarman II, it became a center of Buddhist worship that monks kept up for centuries.
Angkor Thom
The walled royal city Jayavarman VII built in the late 12th century; a laterite wall about 3 kilometers on each side encloses it.
Bayon
Jayavarman VII built it at the end of the 12th or start of the 13th century as the state temple of Angkor Thom, at the center of the city's plan of the universe.
Ta Prohm
Founded in 1186 as a Buddhist monastery, it has been left much as it was found, with trees growing out of its ruins.
Banteay Kdei
A Buddhist temple of Jayavarman VII's reign; in 2001 archaeologists dug up 274 statues buried in its grounds.
Preah Khan (Angkor)
Built by Jayavarman VII in honor of his father; in 1191 a statue of Lokeshvara was consecrated in its central tower.
Banteay Srei
A 10th-century Hindu temple of red sandstone consecrated in 967, built not by a king but by a royal teacher.
Hariharalaya
A 9th-century Khmer royal capital at Roluos whose royal temples are Preah Ko, Bakong and Lolei.
Tonle Sap
The great lake that swells in the flood; people live on its water in floating and stilt villages.
End of the trail
Between the town and the lake, the ten stops span four centuries of Khmer building, from the 9th-century royal capital at Roluos to the temples Jayavarman VII raised around 1200.
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