The capital of the Khmer Empire, a thousand square kilometres of temples and hydraulic engineering in the jungle, of which Angkor Wat is one building.
What it is
The capital of the Khmer Empire from the ninth to the fifteenth century, and at its height the largest pre-industrial city in the world — recent lidar surveys suggest an urban sprawl of around a thousand square kilometres supporting perhaps 750,000 people.
What made that possible was water. Angkor is a hydraulic city: enormous reservoirs, the West Baray still holding water after nine centuries, and a canal network that allowed several rice harvests a year. The current theory for its decline is that the same system failed under climate stress in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
Angkor Wat — the one on the Cambodian flag — is a single temple within it, built by Suryavarman II around 1150 as a Hindu temple to Vishnu, later Buddhist, and the largest religious monument on earth by area. Its bas-reliefs run for 600 metres and its five towers represent Mount Meru.
The temples worth your three days
Day one, the small circuit. Angkor Wat itself — allow three hours, and walk the outer gallery reliefs rather than heading straight for the central tower. Angkor Thom, the walled city, and inside it the Bayon, whose 54 towers carry over 200 enormous serene faces. Ta Prohm, left partly unrestored with silk-cotton trees growing through the masonry, which is the one from the films and is genuinely extraordinary despite that.
Day two, the grand circuit. Preah Khan, large and quiet. Neak Pean, a temple on an island. Ta Som, East Mebon, Pre Rup for sunset.
Day three, further out. Banteay Srei, 25km away, small, pink sandstone, and carrying the finest carving in Cambodia. Beng Mealea, unrestored and overgrown. Kbal Spean, carvings in a riverbed.
Practical
Passes are one, three or seven days, bought from the official Angkor Enterprise office or online — not from a hotel or a tuk-tuk driver. The three-day pass is valid across ten days, so you do not have to use them consecutively.
Sunrise at Angkor Wat is the famous thing and draws a very large crowd to the northern reflecting pool. It is still worth doing once. The southern pool has a fraction of the people and the same view.
Getting around: a tuk-tuk for the day is the standard and cheap; bicycles work for the small circuit; a car is worth it for the far temples.
Dress code is enforced at Angkor Wat’s upper level: shoulders and knees covered, for everyone.
Heat is the real difficulty. Start at sunrise, stop by eleven, resume at three. March to May regularly exceeds 38°C with no shade on the causeways.
Siem Reap
The town is entirely built around the temples and is pleasant, cheap and easy. Pub Street is what it sounds like; the old market and the areas east of the river are better. The Angkor National Museum is worth an hour before you start, not after.
The Cambodia Landmine Museum and the APOPO visitor centre nearby are a reminder of what the country’s last fifty years were, and are worth the detour.
More Ancient Wonders
Machu Picchu
An Inca estate on a ridge between two peaks, abandoned within a century of being built and never found by the Spanish. Now ticketed by circuit, by hour, and capped.
Petra
A Nabataean trading capital carved into rose sandstone, entered through a kilometre-long crack in a cliff. Far larger than the one facade everyone photographs.
The Pyramids of Giza
The only survivor of the seven wonders of the ancient world, on the edge of a city of twenty million, and about 4,500 years old.