Preah Vihear Temple

Interesting facts

The first temple on the site was begun in the early 9th century, though the oldest parts still standing date from the early 10th.

The five gateways are numbered from the sanctuary outwards, so visitors meet gopura five first, and each one hides the next, so the whole complex is never visible at once.

The fifth gopura still carries traces of the red paint that once decorated it.

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.

Divakarapandita served under five successive Khmer kings and ordered that the temple's towers, courts and entrance be redecorated every year.

Some sandstone blocks of the main tower weigh five tonnes or more, and several still show the holes used to lift them into place.

Its builders used small bricks rather than large stone slabs for the corbelled arches, under wooden roof frames covered in terracotta tiles.

Former US Secretary of State Dean Acheson argued Cambodia's case at The Hague, where the court ruled by nine votes to three in 1962.

Ordered to hand over the temple, Thai soldiers dug up their flagpole with the flag still flying and re-erected it on a nearby cliff, Mor I Daeng.

When Cambodia took formal possession in January 1963, Prince Sihanouk walked up the cliff in under an hour for a ceremony attended by about 1,000 people.

Why it is worth it

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. Among the great sanctuaries of the Khmer Empire, none uses its landscape so dramatically.

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. Naga balustrades — the long bodies of serpents with fanned, many-headed hoods — line the causeways, and the gopuras carry some of the finest carved lintels and pediments of Khmer art; one of them shows the Churning of the Ocean of Milk, the Hindu creation myth in which gods and demons haul on a great serpent to stir the cosmic sea.

The sanctuary was built over the eleventh and twelfth centuries, much of it under Suryavarman I and later Suryavarman II, the king of Angkor Wat. It was dedicated to Shiva as Sikharesvara, "lord of the peak", a name that fits the mountain setting precisely, and was later used by Buddhists. Its location on the watershed between two countries made it a subject of a long dispute, settled by the International Court of Justice in 1962 in Cambodia's favour; in 2008 it was inscribed as Cambodia's second World Heritage Site after Angkor.

Climb slowly from the lowest gate, which keeps the reward of the final terrace, the Pey Tadi cliff, until the end. The light is best early or late in the day, when the sandstone turns warm and the plain below is hazy and blue.

Getting there

The temple is in Preah Vihear province, northern Cambodia, about 140 km from Angkor and Siem Reap; Anlong Veaeng is about 67 km away. Siem Reap–Angkor International Airport (SAI) is about 123 km away in a straight line and is the usual starting point. From the Cambodian plain, an access road built in 2003 climbs the escarpment to the temple. The nearest town on the Thai side of the border is Kantharalak, about 28 km away, and the nearest Thai airport is Ubon Ratchathani (UBP), about 97 km away.

Preah Vihear Temple

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

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