Bayon — archaeological site
Image by patrickmoretti06 from Pixabay

Bayon

  • 1 min read
  • 13.441° N 103.859° E
  • UNESCO World Heritage

Interesting facts

  • 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.
  • The temple once carried 49 face towers; only 37 survive, and because many faces are damaged, nobody can give a definitive count.
  • Its central tower rises 43 metres above the ground and was originally cross-shaped before being filled out into a rounded mass.
  • The main sanctuary once held a 3.6-metre Buddha sheltered by the hood of the serpent king Mucalinda, smashed when the Hindu king Jayavarman VIII took power.
  • 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.
  • The courtyard inside the outer gallery originally held 16 chapels, all demolished during the Hindu restoration of the mid-13th century.
  • Scholars believe the famous upper terrace was an afterthought: the Bayon seems first to have been planned as a single-level temple like Ta Prohm.
  • The walled city and temple together cover about 9 square kilometres, more than four times the area of Angkor Wat.
  • One inner-gallery panel shows a king wrestling a giant serpent and later lying ill, scenes linked to the legend of the Leper King.
  • The outer reliefs carry no inscriptions at all, so exactly which historical battles they depict is still debated by scholars.

Why it is worth it

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. It was the last state temple built at Angkor and the only one dedicated primarily to Buddhism, later adapted by Hindu and Theravada successors.

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. The inner gallery, carved later, turns to Hindu mythology. Then climb to the upper terrace, a crowded forest of towers where the faces meet you at eye level and constantly shift as you walk.

Early morning is the best time, before the tour buses and while the stone is still in soft light. Because the temple stands at the centre of Angkor Thom, roads run straight to it from the city's gates at the four cardinal points, which makes it the natural starting point for exploring the rest of the walled city.

Getting there

The Bayon is inside the Angkor Archaeological Park, about 9 km north of Siem Reap, usually reached by tuk-tuk, hired car or bicycle; a valid Angkor pass is required. Siem Reap-Angkor International Airport (SAI) is about 40 km away.

Plan your visit

We have no confirmed visit data yet. Once it is confirmed, this block also carries the date it was checked.

Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Siem Reap 6The Most Beautiful Places in Cambodia 9The Most Remarkable Archaeological Sites in Cambodia 6The Greatest Archaeological Wonders in Cambodia 7The Most Beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Cambodia 7The Most Remarkable UNESCO-Listed Archaeological Sites 114The Greatest UNESCO-Listed Archaeological Wonders 149The Most Remarkable Archaeological Sites 193The Greatest Archaeological Wonders 306The Most Beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites 557

From the encyclopaedia

The Bayon is a richly decorated Theravada Buddhist temple of the Khmer Empire located at Angkor in Cambodia. Built in the late 12th or early 13th century as the state temple of King Jayavarman VII, it stands at the centre of Jayavarman’s capital city, Angkor Thom . The Bayon reflects the strong Buddhist orientation of Jayavarman VII’s reign. Originally conceived as a Mahayana Buddhist monument centered on the cult of the Bodhisattva of compassion, the temple later adapted to the spread of Theravada Buddhism in Cambodia. Its iconography, spatial organization, and emphasis on compassion and kingship illustrate the close relationship between Buddhism and royal authority at Angkor, while its continued use as a Buddhist sanctuary demonstrates the enduring influence of Buddhism in the region.

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