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Angkor Wat (; Khmer: អង្គរវត្ត, "City/Capital of Temples") is a temple complex in Cambodia and is the largest religious monument in the world, on a site measuring 162.6 hectares (1,626,000 m2; 402 acres). Originally constructed as a Hindu temple dedicated to the god Vishnu for the Khmer Empire, it was gradually transformed into a Buddhist temple towards the end of the 12th century as such it is also described as a "Hindu-Buddhist" temple.
It was built by the Khmer King Suryavarman II in the early 12th century in Yaśodharapura (Khmer: យសោធរបុរៈ, present-day Angkor), the capital of the Khmer Empire, as his state temple and eventual mausoleum. Breaking from the Shaiva tradition of previous kings, Angkor Wat was instead dedicated to Vishnu.
As the best-preserved temple at the site, it is the only one to have
remained a significant religious centre since its foundation. The temple
is at the top of the high classical style of Khmer architecture. It has become a symbol of Cambodia, appearing on its national flag, and it is the country's prime attraction for visitors.
Angkor Wat combines two basic plans of Khmer temple architecture: the temple-mountain and the later galleried temple. It is designed to represent Mount Meru, home of the devas in Hindu mythology: within a moat more than 5 kilometres (3 mi) long
and an outer wall 3.6 kilometres (2.2 mi) long are three rectangular
galleries, each raised above the next. At the centre of the temple
stands a quincunx
of towers. Unlike most Angkorian temples, Angkor Wat is oriented to the
west; scholars are divided as to the significance of this. The temple
is admired for the grandeur and harmony of the architecture, its
extensive bas-reliefs, and for the numerous devatas adorning its walls.
As the best-preserved temple at the site, Angkor Wat is the only
one to have remained a significant religious centre since its
foundation. The temple is at the top of the high classical style of
Khmer architecture. It is one of the most important pilgrimage sites for
Buddhists in Cambodia and around the world, having played a major role in converting Cambodia into a Buddhist nation. It has become a symbol of Cambodia, appearing on its national flag, and is the country's main tourist attraction.
Etymology
The modern name Angkor Wat, alternatively Nokor Wat, means "Temple City" or "City of Temples" in Khmer. Angkor (អង្គរ ângkôr) meaning "city" or "capital city", is a vernacular form of the word nokor (នគរ nôkôr), which comes from the Sanskrit/Pali word nagara (Devanāgarī: नगर). Wat (វត្ត vôtt) is the word for "temple grounds", also derived from Sanskrit/Pali vāṭa (Devanāgarī: वाट), meaning "enclosure".
The original name of the temple was Vrah Viṣṇuloka or Parama Viṣṇuloka meaning "the sacred dwelling of Vishnu."
History
Angkor Wat lies 5.5 kilometres (3+1⁄2 mi) north of the modern town of Siem Reap, and a short distance south and slightly east of the previous capital, which was centred at Baphuon. In an area of Cambodia where there is an essential group of ancient structures, it is the southernmost of Angkor's main sites.
According to a myth, the construction of Angkor Wat was ordered by Indra to serve as a palace for his son Precha Ket Mealea. According to the 13th-century Chinese traveller Zhou Daguan, some believed that the temple was constructed in a single night by a divine architect.
The brahmin by the name of Divākarapaṇḍita was responsible for urging King Suryavarman II to construct Angkor Wat. The initial design and construction of the temple took place in the first half of the 12th century, during the reign of Suryavarman II (ruled 1113 – c. 1150). All of the original religious motifs derived from Hinduism. Breaking from the Shaiva tradition of previous kings, Angkor Wat was instead dedicated to Vishnu. It was built as the king's state temple and capital city. As neither the foundation stela
nor any contemporary inscriptions referring to the temple have been
found, its original name is unknown, but it may have been known as
"Varah Vishnu-lok" after the presiding deity. Work seems to have ended shortly after the king's death, leaving some of the bas-relief decoration unfinished. The term Vrah Viṣṇuloka or Parama Viṣṇuloka
literally means "The king who has gone to the supreme world of Vishnu",
which refer to Suryavarman II posthumously and intend to venerate his
glory and memory.
In 1177, approximately 27 years after the death of Suryavarman II, Angkor was sacked by the Chams, the traditional enemies of the Khmer. Thereafter the empire was restored by a new king, Jayavarman VII, who established a new capital and state temple (Angkor Thom and the Bayon,
respectively), a few kilometers north, dedicated to Buddhism, because
the king believed that the Hindu gods had failed him. Angkor Wat was
therefore also gradually converted into a Buddhist site, and many Hindu
sculptures were replaced by Buddhist art.
Early photograph of Angkor Wat in 1866, taken by
Emile GsellTowards the end of the 12th century, Angkor Wat gradually transformed from a Hindu centre of worship to Buddhism, which continues to the present day.
Angkor Wat is unusual among the Angkor temples in that although it was
largely neglected after the 16th century, it was never completely
abandoned. Fourteen inscriptions dated from the 17th century, discovered in the Angkor area, testify to Japanese Buddhist pilgrims that had established small settlements alongside Khmer locals. At that time, the temple was thought by the Japanese visitors to be the famed Jetavana garden of the Buddha, which was originally located in the kingdom of Magadha, India. The best-known inscription tells of Ukondayu Kazufusa, who celebrated the Khmer New Year at Angkor Wat in 1632.
Buddhist monks in front of the reflection pool at Angkor Wat, Cambodia
One of the first Western visitors to the temple was António da Madalena, a Portuguese
friar who visited in 1586 and said that it "is of such extraordinary
construction that it is not possible to describe it with a pen,
particularly since it is like no other building in the world. It has
towers and decoration and all the refinements which the human genius can
conceive of."
In 1622, The Poem of Angkor Wat
composed in Khmer verse describes the beauty of Angkor Wat and creates a
legend around the construction of the complex, supposedly a divine
castle built for legendary Khmer king Preah Ket Mealea by Hindu god
Preah Pisnukar (or Braḥ Bisṇukār, Vishvakarman), as Suryavarman II had already vanished from people's minds.
In 1860, with the help of French missionary Father Charles-Émile
Bouillevaux, the temple was effectively rediscovered by the French
naturalist and explorer Henri Mouhot, who popularised the site in the West through the publication of travel notes, in which he wrote:
One of these temples, a rival to that of Solomon, and erected by some ancient Michelangelo, might take an honorable place beside our most beautiful buildings. It is grander than anything left to us by Greece or Rome, and presents a sad contrast to the state of barbarism in which the nation is now plunged.
In 1861 German anthropologist Aldof Bastian undertook a four-year trip to Southeast Asia and his account of this trip, The People of East Asia ran to six volumes. when Bastian finally published the studies and observations during his Journey through Cambodia to Cochinchina
in Germany in 1868 - told in detail but uninspiredly, above all without
a single one of his drawings of the Angkorian sites - this work hardly
made an impression, while everyone was talking about Henri Mouhot's posthumous work with vivid descriptions of Angkor, Travels in the Central Parts of Indo-China, Siam, Cambodia and Laos, published in 1864 through the Royal Geographical Society.
There were no ordinary dwellings or houses or other signs of
settlement, including cooking utensils, weapons, or items of clothing
usually found at ancient sites. Instead, there is only evidence of the
monuments themselves.
The artistic legacy of Angkor Wat and other Khmer monuments in the Angkor region led directly to France adopting Cambodia as a protectorate
on 11 August 1863 and invading Siam to take control of the ruins. This
quickly led to Cambodia reclaiming lands in the northwestern corner of
the country such as the areas of Siem Reap, Battambang and Sisophon
which were under Siamese rule from 1795 to 1907.
Angkor Wat's aesthetics were on display in the plaster cast museum of Louis Delaporte called musée Indo-chinois which existed in the Parisian Trocadero Palace from c.1880 to the mid-1920s.
The 20th century saw a considerable restoration of Angkor Wat.
Gradually teams of laborers and archeologists pushed back the jungle
and exposed the expanses of stone, permitting the sun to once again
illuminate the dark corners of the temple. Angkor Wat caught the
attention and imagination of a wider audience in Europe when the
pavilion of French protectorate of Cambodia, as part of French Indochina, recreated the life-size replica of Angkor Wat during Paris Colonial Exposition in 1931.
Cambodia gained independence from France on 9 November 1953 and
has controlled Angkor Wat since that time. It is safe to say that from
the colonial period onwards until the site's nomination as UNESCO World Heritage
in 1992, this specific temple of Angkor Wat was instrumental in the
formation of the modern and gradually globalised concept of built
cultural heritage.
Bullet holes left by a shoot-out between the
Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese forces at Angkor Wat
Restoration work was interrupted by the Cambodian Civil War and Khmer Rouge
control of the country during the 1970s and 1980s, but relatively
little damage was done during this period. Camping Khmer Rouge forces
used whatever wood remained in the building structures for firewood, and
a shoot-out between Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese forces put a few bullet
holes in a bas relief. Far more damage was done after the wars, by art thieves
working out of Thailand, which, in the late 1980s and early 1990s,
claimed almost every head that could be lopped off the structures,
including reconstructions.
The temple is a powerful symbol of Cambodia, and is a source of
great national pride that has factored into Cambodia's diplomatic
relations with France, the United States, and its neighbour Thailand. A
depiction of Angkor Wat has been a part of Cambodian national flags since the introduction of the first version circa 1863.
From a larger historical and even transcultural perspective, however,
the temple of Angkor Wat did not become a symbol of national pride sui generis
but had been inscribed into a larger politico-cultural process of
French-colonial heritage production in which the original temple site
was presented in French colonial and universal exhibitions in Paris and
Marseille between 1889 and 1937.
In December 2015, it was announced that a research team from University of Sydney
had found a previously unseen ensemble of buried towers built and
demolished during the construction of Angkor Wat, as well as a massive
structure of unknown purpose on its south side and wooden
fortifications. The findings also include evidence of low-density
residential occupation in the region, with a road grid, ponds, and
mounds. These indicate that the temple precinct, bounded by moat and
wall, may not have been used exclusively by the priestly elite, as was
previously thought. The team used LiDAR, ground-penetrating radar and targeted excavation to map Angkor Wat.
Architecture
Site and plan
The general layout of Angkor Wat with its central structure in the middle
An aerial view of Angkor Wat
Angkor Wat is a unique combination of the temple mountain (the standard design for the empire's state temples) and the later plan of concentric galleries, most of which were derived from religious beliefs of Hinduism originally.
The construction of Angkor Wat also suggests that there was a celestial
significance with certain features of the temple. This is observed in
the temple's east–west orientation, and lines of sight from terraces
within the temple that show specific towers to be at the precise
location of the sunrise on a solstice. The temple is a representation of Mount Meru, the home of the gods according to Hindu mythology: the central quincunx
of towers symbolises the five peaks of the mountain, and the walls and
moat symbolize the surrounding mountain ranges and ocean.
Access to the upper areas of the temple was progressively more
exclusive, with the laity being admitted only to the lowest level.
A detailed plan of the central structure
The Angkor Wat temple's main tower aligns to the morning sun of the spring equinox. Unlike most Khmer temples, Angkor Wat is oriented to the west rather than the east. This has led many (including Maurice Glaize and George Coedès) to conclude that Suryavarman intended it to serve as his funerary temple. Further evidence for this view is provided by the bas-reliefs, which proceed in a counter-clockwise direction—prasavya in Hindu terminology—as this is the reverse of the normal order. Rituals take place in reverse order during Brahminic funeral services.
Archaeologist Charles Higham also describes a container which may have been a funerary jar which was recovered from the central tower. It has been nominated by some as the greatest expenditure of energy on the disposal of a corpse. Freeman and Jacques, however, note that several other temples of Angkor depart from the typical eastern orientation, and suggest that Angkor Wat's alignment was due to its dedication to Vishnu, who was associated with the west.
Drawing on the temple's alignment and dimensions, and on the
content and arrangement of the bas-reliefs, researcher Eleanor Mannikka
argues that the structure represents a claimed new era of peace under
King Suryavarman II:
"as the measurements of solar and lunar time cycles were built into the
sacred space of Angkor Wat, this divine mandate to rule was anchored to
consecrated chambers and corridors meant to perpetuate the king's power
and to honour and placate the deities manifest in the heavens above." Mannikka's suggestions have been received with a mixture of interest and scepticism in academic circles. She distances herself from the speculations of others, such as Graham Hancock, that Angkor Wat is part of a representation of the constellation Draco.
The oldest surviving plan of Angkor Wat dates to 1715 and is
credited to Fujiwara Tadayoshi. The plan is stored in the Suifu
Meitoku-kai Shokokan Museum in Mito, Japan.
Style
Angkor Wat as viewed from the side
Angkor Wat is the prime example of the classical style of Khmer architecture—the
Angkor Wat style—to which it has given its name. By the 12th century
Khmer architects had become skilled and confident in the use of sandstone (rather than brick or laterite)
as the main building material. Most of the visible areas are of
sandstone blocks, while laterite was used for the outer wall and for
hidden structural parts. The binding agent used to join the blocks is
yet to be identified, although natural resins or slaked lime has been suggested.
The temple has drawn praise above all for the harmony of its
design. According to Maurice Glaize, a mid-20th-century conservator of
Angkor, the temple "attains a classic perfection by the restrained
monumentality of its finely balanced elements and the precise
arrangement of its proportions. It is a work of power, unity, and
style."
Architecturally, the elements characteristic of the style include: the ogival, redented towers shaped like lotus buds; half-galleries
to broaden passageways; axial galleries connecting enclosures; and the
cruciform terraces which appear along the main axis of the temple.
Typical decorative elements are devatas (or apsaras), bas-reliefs, and on pediments
extensive garlands and narrative scenes. The statuary of Angkor Wat is
considered conservative, being more static and less graceful than
earlier work. Other elements of the design have been destroyed by looting and the passage of time, including gilded stucco on the towers, gilding on some figures on the bas-reliefs, and wooden ceiling panels and doors.
Features
Outer enclosure
A view of the gates and west wall of the outer enclosure of Angkor Wat from across the moat
Ta Reach Statue at Angkor Wat, an Eight-Armed
Vishnu.
The outer wall, 1,024 m (3,360 ft) by 802 m (2,631 ft) and 4.5 m
(15 ft) high, is surrounded by a 30 m (98 ft) apron of open ground and a
moat 190 m (620 ft) wide and over 5 kilometres (3 mi) in perimeter. The moat extends 1.5 kilometres from east to west and 1.3 kilometres from north to south.
Access to the temple is by an earth bank to the east and a sandstone
causeway to the west; the latter, the main entrance, is a later
addition, possibly replacing a wooden bridge. There are gopuras at each of the cardinal points;
the western is by far the largest and has three ruined towers. Glaize
notes that this gopura both hides and echoes the form of the temple
proper.
Under the southern tower is a statue known as Ta Reach, originally an eight-armed statue of Vishnu may have occupied the temple's central shrine.
Galleries run between the towers and as far as two further entrances on
either side of the gopura often referred to as "elephant gates", as
they are large enough to admit those animals. These galleries have
square pillars on the outer (west) side and a closed wall on the inner
(east) side. The ceiling between the pillars is decorated with lotus
rosettes; the west face of the wall with dancing figures; and the east
face of the wall with balustered windows, dancing male figures on
prancing animals, and devatas, including (south of the entrance) the only one in the temple to be showing her teeth.
The outer wall encloses a space of 820,000 square metres (203
acres), which besides the temple proper was originally occupied by the
city and, to the north of the temple, the royal palace. Like all secular
buildings of Angkor, these were built of perishable materials rather
than of stone, so nothing remains of them except the outlines of some of
the streets. Most of the area is now covered by forest. A 350 m (1,150 ft) causeway connects the western gopura to the temple proper, with naga balustrades and six sets of steps leading down to the city on either side. Each side also features a library
with entrances at each cardinal point, in front of the third set of
stairs from the entrance, and a pond between the library and the temple
itself. The ponds are later additions to the design, as is the cruciform
terrace guarded by lions connecting the causeway to the central
structure.
Central structure
The temple stands on a terrace raised higher than the city. It is made of three rectangular galleries rising to a central tower, each level higher than the last. The two inner galleries each have four large towers at their ordinal
corners (that is, NW, NE, SE and SW) surrounding a higher fifth tower.
This pattern is sometimes called a quincunx and represents the mountains
of Meru.
Because the temple faces west, the features are all set back towards
the east, leaving more space to be filled in each enclosure and gallery
on the west side; for the same reason the west-facing steps are
shallower than those on the other sides.
The central tower symbolizing the sacred
Mount Meru
One of the four corner towers of Angkor Wat
A view of the outer gallery of Angkor Wat
Mannikka interprets the galleries as being dedicated to the king, Brahma, the moon, and Vishnu. Each gallery has a gopura
at each of the points. The outer gallery measures 187 m (614 ft) by
215 m (705 ft), with pavilions rather than towers at the corners. The
gallery is open to the outside of the temple, with columned
half-galleries extending and buttressing the structure. Connecting the
outer gallery to the second enclosure on the west side is a cruciform
cloister called Preah Poan (meaning "The Thousand Buddhas" Gallery). Buddha
images were left in the cloister by pilgrims over the centuries,
although most have now been removed. This area has many inscriptions
relating the good deeds of pilgrims, most written in Khmer but others in Burmese and Japanese. The four small courtyards marked out by the cloister may originally have been filled with water. North and south of the cloister are libraries.
Beyond, the second and inner galleries are connected to each
other and to two flanking libraries by another cruciform terrace, again a
later addition. From the second level upwards, devatas
abound on the walls, singly or in groups of up to four. The
second-level enclosure is 100 m (330 ft) by 115 m (377 ft), and may
originally have been flooded to represent the ocean around Mount Meru.
Three sets of steps on each side lead up to the corner towers and
gopuras of the inner gallery. The very steep stairways represent the
difficulty of ascending to the kingdom of the gods. This inner gallery, called the Bakan,
is a 60 m (200 ft) square with axial galleries connecting each gopura
with the central shrine, and subsidiary shrines located below the corner
towers.
The roofings of the galleries are decorated with the motif of the body of a snake ending in the heads of lions or garudas. Carved lintels and pediments
decorate the entrances to the galleries and to the shrines. The tower
above the central shrine rises 43 m (141 ft) to a height of 65 m
(213 ft) above the ground; unlike those of previous temple mountains,
the central tower is raised above the surrounding four.
The shrine itself, originally occupied by a statue of Vishnu and open
on each side, was walled in when the temple was converted to Theravada Buddhism,
the new walls featuring standing Buddhas. In 1934, the conservator
George Trouvé excavated the pit beneath the central shrine: filled with
sand and water it had already been robbed of its treasure, but he did
find a sacred foundation deposit of gold leaf two metres above ground level.
Decoration
Integrated with the architecture of the building, and one of the
causes for its fame is Angkor Wat's extensive decoration, which
predominantly takes the form of bas-relief friezes. The inner walls of the outer gallery bear a series of large-scale scenes mainly depicting episodes from the Hindu epics the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Higham has called these "the greatest known linear arrangement of stone carving". From the north-west corner anti-clockwise, the western gallery shows the Battle of Lanka (from the Ramayana, in which Rama defeats Ravana) and the Battle of Kurukshetra (from the Mahabharata, showing the mutual annihilation of the Kaurava and Pandava clans). On the southern gallery follow the only historical scene, a procession of Suryavarman II, then the 32 hells and 37 heavens of Hinduism.
On the eastern gallery is one of the most celebrated scenes, the Churning of the Sea of Milk, showing 92 asuras and 88 devas using the serpent Vasuki
to churn the sea under Vishnu's direction (Mannikka counts only 91
asuras, and explains the asymmetrical numbers as representing the number
of days from the winter solstice to the spring equinox, and from the equinox to the summer solstice). It is followed by Vishnu defeating asuras (a 16th-century addition). The northern gallery shows Krishna's victory over Bana (where according to Glaize, "The workmanship is at its worst").
Angkor Wat is decorated with depictions of apsaras and devata; there are more than 1,796 depictions of devata in the present research inventory.
Angkor Wat architects employed small apsara images (30–40 cm or
12–16 in) as decorative motifs on pillars and walls. They incorporated
larger devata images (all full-body portraits measuring approximately
95–110 cm or 37–43 in) more prominently at every level of the temple
from the entry pavilion to the tops of the high towers. In 1927, Sappho
Marchal published a study cataloging the remarkable diversity of their
hair, headdresses, garments, stance, jewellery and decorative flowers,
which Marchal concluded were based on actual practices of the Angkor
period.
Construction techniques
The monument was made out of five to ten million sandstone blocks with a maximum weight of 1.5 tons each. The entire city of Angkor
used far greater amounts of stone than all the Egyptian pyramids
combined and occupied an area significantly greater than modern-day Paris. Moreover, unlike the Egyptian pyramids, which use limestone quarried 0.5 km (1⁄4 mi) away, the entire city of Angkor was built with sandstone quarried 40 km (25 mi) (or more) away. This sandstone had to be transported from Mount Kulen, a quarry approximately 40 kilometres (25 mi) northeast.
The route has been suggested to span 35 kilometres (22 mi) along a canal towards Tonlé Sap lake, another 35 kilometres (22 mi) crossing the lake, and finally 15 kilometres (9 mi) against the current along Siem Reap River, making a total journey of 90 kilometres (55 mi). However, Etsuo Uchida and Ichita Shimoda of Waseda University in Tokyo,
Japan have discovered in 2011 a shorter 35-kilometre (22 mi) canal
connecting Mount Kulen and Angkor Wat using satellite imagery. The two
believe that the Khmer used this route instead.
Devata Sculpture on Wall at Angkor Wat
Virtually all of its surfaces, columns, lintels, and even roofs are
carved. There are kilometres of reliefs illustrating scenes from Indian literature
including unicorns, griffins, winged dragons pulling chariots as well
as warriors following an elephant-mounted leader and celestial dancing
girls with elaborate hairstyles. The gallery wall alone is decorated
with almost 1,000 m2 (11,000 sq ft) of bas reliefs. Holes on
some of the Angkor walls indicate that they may have been decorated with
bronze sheets. These were highly prized in ancient times and were a
prime target for robbers.
While excavating Khajuraho, Alex Evans, a stonemason and
sculptor, recreated a stone sculpture under 1.2 metres (4 ft), this took
about 60 days to carve.
Roger Hopkins and Mark Lehner also conducted experiments to quarry
limestone which took 12 quarrymen 22 days to quarry about 400 tons of
stone.
The labour force to quarry, transport, carve and install so much
sandstone must have run into the thousands including many highly skilled
artisans. The skills required to carve these sculptures were developed
hundreds of years earlier, as demonstrated by some artefacts that have
been dated to the seventh century, before the Khmer came to power.
Angkor Wat in the present
Restoration and conservation
The restored head of a
nāga
beside an unrestored lion at the start of the causeway leading to the
entrance of Angkor Wat. The contrast of restored and unrestored figures
is deliberate. The major restoration of the causeway was first initiated
in the 1960s by the French.
As with most other ancient temples in Cambodia, Angkor Wat has faced
extensive damage and deterioration by a combination of plant overgrowth,
fungi, ground movements, war damage and theft. The war damage to Angkor
Wat's temples however has been very limited, compared to the rest of
Cambodia's temple ruins, and it has also received the most attentive
restoration.
The restoration of Angkor Wat in the modern era began with the
establishment of the Conservation d'Angkor (Angkor Conservancy) by the École française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO) in 1908; before that date, activities at the site were primarily concerned with exploration.
The Conservation d'Angkor was responsible for the research,
conservation, and restoration activities carried out at Angkor until the
early 1970s, and a major restoration of Angkor was undertaken in the 1960s.
Work on Angkor was abandoned during the Khmer Rouge era and the Conservation d'Angkor was disbanded in 1975. Between 1986 and 1992, the Archaeological Survey of India carried out restoration work on the temple,
as France did not recognise the Cambodian government at the time.
Criticisms have been raised about both the early French restoration
attempts and particularly the later Indian work, with concerns over
damage done to the stone surface by the use of chemicals and cement.
In 1992, following an appeal for help by Norodom Sihanouk, Angkor Wat was listed in UNESCO's World Heritage in Danger (later removed in 2004) and World Heritage Site together with an appeal by UNESCO to the international community to save Angkor. Zoning of the area was set up to protect the Angkor site in 1994, APSARA was established in 1995 to protect and manage the area, and a law to protect Cambodian heritage was passed in 1996.
A number of countries such as France, Japan and China are currently involved in various Angkor Wat conservation projects. The German Apsara Conservation Project (GACP) is working to protect the devatas,
and other bas-reliefs which decorate the temple, from damage. The
organisation's survey found that around 20% of the devatas were in very
poor condition, mainly because of natural erosion and deterioration of
the stone but in part also due to earlier restoration efforts.
Other work involves the repair of collapsed sections of the structure,
and prevention of further collapse: the west facade of the upper level,
for example, has been buttressed by scaffolding since 2002, while a Japanese team completed restoration of the north library of the outer enclosure in 2005.
Microbial biofilms have been found degrading sandstone at Angkor Wat,
Preah Khan, and the Bayon and West Prasat in Angkor. The dehydration-
and radiation-resistant filamentous cyanobacteria can produce organic
acids that degrade the stone. A dark filamentous fungus was found in
internal and external Preah Khan samples, while the alga Trentepohlia was found only in samples taken from external, pink-stained stone at Preah Khan. Replicas have been made to replace some of the lost or damaged sculptures.
Tourism
Buddhist monks giving blessings to a tourist
Since the 1990s, Angkor Wat has become a major tourist destination. In 1993, there were only 7,650 visitors to the site;
by 2004, government figures show that 561,000 foreign visitors had
arrived in Siem Reap province that year, approximately 50% of all
foreign tourists in Cambodia. The number reached over a million in 2007, and over two million by 2012. Most visited Angkor Wat, which received over two million foreign tourists in 2013, and 2.6 million by 2018.
The site was managed by the private SOKIMEX group between 1990 and 2016, which rented it from the Cambodian government. The influx of tourists has so far caused relatively little damage, other than some graffiti;
ropes and wooden steps have been introduced to protect the bas-reliefs
and floors, respectively. Tourism has also provided some additional
funds for maintenance—as of 2000 approximately 28% of ticket revenues
across the whole Angkor
site was spent on the temples—although most work is carried out by
teams sponsored by foreign governments rather than by the Cambodian
authorities.
Tourists watching the sunrise in front of the reflecting pond at Angkor Wat
Since Angkor Wat has seen significant growth in tourism throughout the years, UNESCO
and its International Co-ordinating Committee for the Safeguarding and
Development of the Historic Site of Angkor (ICC), in association with
representatives from the Royal Government and APSARA, organised seminars to discuss the concept of "cultural tourism".
Wanting to avoid commercial and mass tourism, the seminars emphasised
the importance of providing high-quality accommodation and services in
order for the Cambodian government to benefit economically, while also
incorporating the richness of Cambodian culture.
In 2001, this incentive resulted in the concept of the "Angkor Tourist
City" which would be developed with regard to traditional Khmer
architecture, contain leisure and tourist facilities, and provide
luxurious hotels capable of accommodating large numbers of tourists.
The prospect of developing such large tourist accommodations has
encountered concerns from both APSARA and the ICC, claiming that
previous tourism developments in the area have neglected construction
regulations and more of these projects have the potential to damage
landscape features.
Also, the large scale of these projects have begun to threaten the
quality of the nearby town's water, sewage, and electricity systems.
It has been noted that such high frequency of tourism and growing
demand for quality accommodations in the area, such as the development
of a large highway, has had a direct effect on the underground water
table, subsequently straining the structural stability of the temples at
Angkor Wat.
Locals of Siem Reap have also voiced concern that the charm and
atmosphere of their town have been compromised in order to entertain
tourism.
Since this local atmosphere is the key component to projects like
Angkor Tourist City, the local officials continue to discuss how to
successfully incorporate future tourism without sacrificing local values
and culture.
At the ASEAN Tourism Forum 2012, it was agreed that Borobudur and Angkor Wat would become sister sites and the provinces sister provinces.
In 2020, the
COVID-19 pandemic led to
travel restrictions
being introduced across the world, which had a severe impact on
Cambodia's tourism sector. As a result, visitors to Angkor Wat
plummeted, leaving the usually crowded complex almost deserted.
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