Ta Prohm — ruins
Image by Graham-H from Pixabay

Ta Prohm

  • 1 min read
  • 13.435° N 103.889° E
  • UNESCO World Heritage

Interesting facts

  • The temple's original name was Rajavihara, the Royal Monastery, and its main image of the goddess Prajnaparamita was modelled on the king's mother.
  • Its foundation stele lists 18 high priests, 615 dancers and some 2,740 officials, and says the temple drew income from more than 3,000 villages.
  • The same inscription inventories the temple treasure, including 35 diamonds, more than 40,000 pearls and more than 4,500 precious stones.
  • The outermost wall encloses an area of about 1,000 by 650 metres, while the temple itself sits within five concentric rectangular enclosures.
  • The giant trees embracing the walls are mainly silk-cotton trees and strangler figs, which took root in stones loosened after the temple was abandoned.
  • A small carved animal on one pillar, nicknamed the dinosaur carving, has become a favourite of pseudoscience theories about stegosaurus sightings.
  • The Archaeological Survey of India worked for years to stabilise the temple, completing a major restoration in 2013 while keeping the trees in place.
  • Ta Prohm became part of the Angkor UNESCO World Heritage Site when it was inscribed in 1992.

Why it is worth it

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. It was infrastructure on the scale of a modern town, built around a shrine.

The roots strangling its galleries today are there on purpose. Unlike Angkor Wat, which conservators have spent decades stabilizing and reconstructing stone by stone, Ta Prohm was deliberately left in a controlled state of collapse: the massive silk-cotton and Tetrameles trees growing through its walls were kept rather than cleared, as a conscious decision to preserve the relationship between jungle and stone. The practical effect is that Ta Prohm is one of the only Angkor temples that still looks roughly the way it did when 19th-century French explorers first cut their way in, rather than after a century of restoration.

Its modern fame owes a lot to a 2001 Hollywood shoot — scenes for Lara Croft: Tomb Raider were filmed among its roots, and unlike some other Angkor locations the film's version stayed close to how the temple actually looks, which is part of why the association stuck. But the eerie, half-swallowed atmosphere that made it a good film set is exactly what had already been drawing artists and photographers there since the site's rediscovery in the 1860s.

Getting there

9 km from Siem Reap. Siem Reap-Angkor International Airport (SAI) is about 37 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 Beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Cambodia 7The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Ruins 15The Most Beautiful Ruins 36The Most Beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites 557

From the encyclopaedia

Ta Prohm is the modern name of a temple near the city of Siem Reap, Cambodia, approximately one kilometre east of Angkor Thom and on the southern edge of the East Baray. It was built in the Bayon style largely in the late 12th century and early 13th century and was originally called Rajavihara. It was founded by the Khmer King Jayavarman VII as a Mahayana Buddhist monastery and center of learning dedicated to his mother. Almost 80,000 people were required to maintain or attend at the temple, including over 2,700 officials and 615 dancers.

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13.43500, 103.88917per Wikidata