Welcome to Angkor Wat

In the northwestern corner of Cambodia, about four miles north of the modern town of Siem Reap, there is a structure so large that it looks from the air more like a city than a building. Its outer moat — 600 feet wide and nearly four miles long — surrounds a rectangular island of jungle. Inside that island, behind a sandstone causeway lined with nagas (mythological serpents), five towers rise from a series of gallery-wrapped terraces, arranged to mimic the five peaks of Mount Meru, the sacred mountain at the center of the Hindu and Buddhist cosmos.

Angkor Wat was built in the 12th century by King Suryavarman II of the Khmer Empire, who ruled from approximately 1113 to 1150 CE. Construction is believed to have spanned some three decades and employed tens of thousands of workers, artists, and craftsmen. When it was completed, it was the largest religious monument on Earth — a title it still holds today, more than 900 years later.

The Khmer Empire eventually declined. The capital was abandoned in the 15th century. Jungle closed over the temples, roots split stone walls, and Angkor disappeared from maps. It was never truly "lost" — monks continued to worship at Angkor Wat through centuries of abandonment — but it was unknown to the wider world until French naturalist Henri Mouhot described it in 1860 and the world gasped.

Today, UNESCO protects Angkor as a World Heritage Site. It draws millions of visitors a year. In this trip, you will walk through eight of its most extraordinary places — from the grand main temple to a pink sandstone jewel in the jungle 25 kilometers away. Prepare to have your sense of what humans can build permanently rearranged.