The Greatest Archaeological Wonders in Cambodia
7 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the greatest archaeological wonders in Cambodia are Angkor Wat, Bayon and Preah Vihear Temple. The list covers 7 archaeological wonders. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Cambodia's archaeological wonders are the legacy of the Khmer Empire, which between the ninth and fifteenth centuries ruled much of mainland Southeast Asia from its capital at Angkor. Its kings expressed their power and devotion in stone temples that modelled Mount Meru, the mountain at the centre of the Hindu and Buddhist cosmos, and they built a network of reservoirs and canals that supported one of the largest cities of the pre-industrial world. Earlier kingdoms and later forests both left their mark on what survives.
Angkor Wat, built for King Suryavarman II in the early twelfth century and dedicated to Vishnu, is the largest religious monument in the world, its five towers rising behind a wide moat. The Bayon, at the centre of Angkor Thom, was built by Jayavarman VII around 1200 and is crowded with towers bearing serene stone faces. Banteay Srei, a small tenth-century temple of pink sandstone, is carved with the finest decoration of Khmer art.
Further from Angkor the variety grows. Preah Vihear sits on the edge of a cliff in the Dângrêk Mountains, its sanctuaries climbing a long axis toward the precipice. Koh Ker, briefly the royal capital in the tenth century, is dominated by a seven-tiered stepped pyramid. Kbal Spean, in the hills of Phnom Kulen, has lingas and Hindu deities carved into the bed of a forest river. Sambor Prei Kuk, the pre-Angkorian capital of Isanapura, preserves brick temples of the seventh century, many of them octagonal.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Angkor Wat | Archaeological site | ✓ |
| 2 | Bayon | Archaeological site | ✓ |
| 3 | Preah Vihear Temple | Temple | ✓ |
| 4 | Koh Ker | Archaeological site | ✓ |
| 5 | Banteay Srei | Temple | ✓ |
| 6 | Kbal Spean | Petroglyph | |
| 7 | Sambor Prei Kuk | Archaeological site | ✓ |
01 Angkor Wat
Cambodia · 5.4 km from Siem Reap13.412° N 103.867° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by The_5ifth from Pixabay The plan is a model of the Hindu cosmos. A moat 190 metres wide, over 5 km around, stands for the ocean. An outer wall about 1,024 by 802 metres encloses the grounds. Inside, three galleries rise one above another towards five lotus-bud towers arranged in a quincunx, the image of Mount Meru. Most of the visible stone is sandstone quarried at Mount Kulen and probably floated in along canals.
Did you know? The central tower rises about 65 metres above the ground, and a causeway 350 metres long leads to it from the western gate.
02 Bayon
Cambodia · 8.3 km from Siem Reap13.441° N 103.859° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by patrickmoretti06 from Pixabay The temple is best taken from the outside in. The outer gallery carries the liveliest reliefs at Angkor: along the south side, a naval battle on the Tonle Sap lake between Khmer and Cham fleets, and beneath the soldiers scenes of everyday life, including a market, open-air cooking, women tending children and an invalid, a cockfight and a Chinese junk; other panels show processions of troops and elephants, war machines, jugglers and wrestlers.
Did you know? Fragments of that Buddha were recovered from the bottom of a well in 1933, reassembled, and are now displayed in a small pavilion at Angkor.
03 Preah Vihear Temple
Cambodia14.391° N 104.680° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
PsamatheM · CC BY-SA 4.0 Unlike most Khmer temples, which unfold in concentric enclosures around a central tower, Preah Vihear runs in a single line about 800 metres long, climbing from north to south up the slope of the ridge. A pilgrim's way of stairs and causeways passes through five gopuras, or gateway pavilions, each set higher than the last, each opening onto a new courtyard, until the path reaches the main sanctuary at the cliff's edge.
Did you know? Divakarapandita served under five successive Khmer kings and ordered that the temple's towers, courts and entrance be redecorated every year.
04 Koh Ker
Cambodia13.783° N 104.533° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
PsamatheM · CC BY-SA 4.0 Inscriptions call the city Lingapura, "city of lingas", and Chok Gargyar, a name variously translated as "city of glance" or "iron tree forest". In less than two decades its builders raised an astonishing number of monuments: more than 180 sanctuaries have been identified within the protected area, around 40 of them temples from Jayavarman IV's reign.
Did you know? At Prasat Thneng looters hacked a notch about half a metre deep into the giant linga but failed to topple it.
05 Banteay Srei
Cambodia · 28.4 km from Siem Reap13.599° N 103.963° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by DEZALB from Pixabay That delicacy is the whole point of a visit. The temple is built of a fine-grained pink and red sandstone that can be worked almost like wood, and its builders covered nearly every surface with ornament: scrolling foliage, garlands, guardian figures and miniature towers that repeat the shapes of the real ones.
Did you know? Banteay Srei is the first Khmer temple where pediments show complete narrative scenes from myth rather than single figures.
06 Kbal Spean
Cambodia · 39.7 km from Siem Reap13.687° N 104.015° E
Prerit https://www.flickr.com/people/prerit/ · CC BY-SA 2.0 Downstream of the arch the stone is covered by the motif that gives the site its other name, the River of a Thousand Lingas: rows of small square bosses, each a linga, the emblem of Shiva, set in a regular grid under a few centimetres of clear water. One group sits in a rectangular frame with an outlet channel read as a yoni, the female principle.
Did you know? On the east bank a group of carvings once centred on Shiva as an ascetic, a subject rarely seen at Angkor, but its central figure has been destroyed or taken.
07 Sambor Prei Kuk
Cambodia · 23.7 km from Kampong Thom12.867° N 105.040° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
PsamatheM · CC BY-SA 4.0 The site was developed as a royal city and sanctuary by King Isanavarman I, who ruled in the early 7th century. Its temples are grouped in three main walled complexes. The northern group is centred on Prasat Sambor, the principal 7th-century temple, dedicated to a form of Shiva. The southern group, Prasat Yeay Poeun, contains some twenty-two sanctuaries built in the first decades of the 7th century.
Did you know? The Chinese Book of Sui describes the Chenla capital, mentioning a great hall and guard buildings.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the greatest archaeological wonders in Cambodia?
- On our list, Angkor Wat ranks first, followed by Bayon and Preah Vihear Temple.
- Who built Angkor Wat?
- Angkor Wat was built for the Khmer king Suryavarman II in the first half of the 12th century, as a state temple dedicated to Vishnu. It later became a Buddhist temple and has never been fully abandoned.
- What is Kbal Spean?
- Kbal Spean, often called the River of a Thousand Lingas, is a site in the Phnom Kulen hills where Hindu images and many small lingas were carved into the sandstone riverbed in the 11th and 12th centuries. The water flowing over them was believed to be sanctified.
- Why is Banteay Srei called the citadel of women?
- Its name is usually translated as citadel of women or citadel of beauty, and is often linked to the delicacy of its carvings. Unusually, it was built not by a king but by a Brahmin courtier, Yajnavaraha, and was consecrated in 967.
- How many archaeological wonders are on this list in Cambodia?
- The list covers 7 archaeological wonders.