The Most Beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Cambodia
7 places · updated 6 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Cambodia are Angkor Wat, Bayon and Preah Vihear Temple. The list covers 7 UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Last updated 6 October 2026.
Cambodia's World Heritage Sites chart the rise of Khmer civilisation over more than seven centuries, from the brick towers of the early kingdom of Chenla to the vast stone temples of Angkor. Each listing marks a distinct stage: the first capitals, the experiments in monumental form, the classical height and the late Buddhist building boom. Taken together they form one of the most complete records of an ancient empire anywhere, set in forests that still surround many of the ruins.
Angkor, listed in 1992, is one of the largest archaeological sites in the world. At its heart, Angkor Wat, built in the twelfth century for Vishnu, combines a moated enclosure, galleries of bas-reliefs and five lotus-shaped towers. The Bayon, the temple at the centre of Angkor Thom, is famous for its many towers carved with calm faces, and Ta Prohm, a monastery founded by Jayavarman VII, has been left in the grip of silk-cotton and strangler fig trees. Banteay Srei, carved from pink sandstone, holds some of the most refined ornament in Khmer art.
The other listings extend the story. Sambor Prei Kuk, the seventh-century capital of Isanapura, preserves brick temples with octagonal towers that predate Angkor. Koh Ker, a short-lived tenth-century capital, is dominated by a seven-tiered pyramid rising out of the forest. Preah Vihear, a mountain temple dedicated to Shiva, climbs a long sequence of terraces to the edge of a cliff in the Dângrêk Mountains.
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 | Ta Prohm | Ruins | ✓ |
| 6 | Banteay Srei | Temple | ✓ |
| 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 Angkor Wat is the largest religious monument on Earth and the one building every Cambodian knows. It appears on the national flag. King Suryavarman II commissioned it in the first half of the 12th century as the state temple of his capital, Yaśodharapura, and dedicated it to Vishnu. It was most likely also intended as his mausoleum.
Did you know? The temple was built from an estimated five to ten million sandstone blocks, the heaviest weighing about 1.5 tonnes.
02 Bayon
Cambodia · 8.3 km from Siem Reap13.441° N 103.859° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by patrickmoretti06 from Pixabay The Bayon stands at the exact centre of Angkor Thom, the walled capital built by King Jayavarman VII at the end of the 12th and beginning of the 13th century, and it is the temple of faces. Its towers carry more than two hundred giant stone faces, smiling calmly in every direction: often read as the compassionate bodhisattva Lokeshvara, as the king himself, or as both.
Did you know? The name Bayon dates only from 1880, when French scholar Étienne Aymonier coined it, guessing it echoed Vaijayanta, the celestial palace of the god Indra.
03 Preah Vihear Temple
Cambodia14.391° N 104.680° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
PsamatheM · CC BY-SA 4.0 Preah Vihear is a temple built on the edge of the world as the Khmer knew it. It stands on a promontory of the Dângrêk Mountains where the escarpment breaks off in a sheer cliff some 525 metres above the Cambodian plain, and from the last terrace the land below stretches away to the horizon — a view that makes the setting as much a part of the monument as its stones.
Did you know? A stele inscribed around 1120 records that the royal guru Divakarapandita gave the temple a golden dancing Shiva and lined its floor with bronze plates.
04 Koh Ker
Cambodia13.783° N 104.533° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
PsamatheM · CC BY-SA 4.0 Rising out of the forest of northern Cambodia, the seven-tiered pyramid of Prang at Koh Ker stands 36 metres high on a base about 62 metres square, a stepped mountain of stone that once carried a colossal linga at its summit. For a brief and extraordinary moment in the 10th century this remote site was the capital of the Khmer Empire.
Did you know? An inscription records that the linga crowning the great pyramid stood roughly four and a half metres tall and that raising it caused great difficulty.
05 Ta Prohm
Cambodia · 8.7 km from Siem Reap13.435° N 103.889° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by Graham-H from Pixabay Ta Prohm was never meant to be a ruin — it was meant to be a small city. Founded in 1186 by Jayavarman VII as a Buddhist monastery dedicated to his mother, its own foundation inscription claims the complex supported over 12,000 people living on site, including monks and hundreds of dancers, and provided services to tens of thousands more in the surrounding countryside.
Did you know? Ta Prohm became part of the Angkor UNESCO World Heritage Site when it was inscribed in 1992.
06 Banteay Srei
Cambodia · 28.4 km from Siem Reap13.599° N 103.963° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by DEZALB from Pixabay Banteay Srei is a small temple with an outsized reputation. Set in the countryside about 25 kilometres northeast of the main Angkor group, it was consecrated in 967, and unlike almost every other major monument of Angkor it was not built by a king but by two courtiers in the service of Rajendravarman II, Yajnavaraha and Vishnukumara.
Did you know? Its exact consecration date, 22 April 967, is known from a foundation stela found only in 1936; scholars had assumed the rich carving meant a later date.
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 Sambor Prei Kuk is a forest of brick temples, scattered among the trees of central Cambodia, that predates Angkor by several centuries. Under its ancient name, Isanapura, it was the capital of the Chenla kingdom, and many of its sanctuaries were built in the 7th century. Octagonal brick towers stand among the trees, decorated with carved foliage, lion figures and rows of animals.
Did you know? Its ten octagonal temples are considered the oldest of their kind in Southeast Asia and have no known direct Indian precedent.
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 most beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Cambodia?
- On our list, Angkor Wat ranks first, followed by Bayon and Preah Vihear Temple.
- Which sites in Cambodia are on the World Heritage List?
- Angkor was inscribed in 1992, the Temple of Preah Vihear in 2008, Sambor Prei Kuk in 2017 and Koh Ker in 2023.
- Why are trees growing on Ta Prohm?
- When French archaeologists began clearing Angkor in the early 20th century, they deliberately left Ta Prohm largely as it was found, to show how the temples looked when rediscovered. Silk-cotton and strangler fig trees still grow over its walls.
- Who built the Bayon?
- The Bayon was built around 1200 by King Jayavarman VII as the state temple of his new capital, Angkor Thom. It was Buddhist from the start, unlike the earlier Hindu Angkor Wat.
- How many UNESCO World Heritage Sites are on this list in Cambodia?
- The list covers 7 UNESCO World Heritage Sites.