Angkor Thom
The first thing you notice at Angkor Thom is the gate. A 23-metre sandstone tower rises from the causeway, and carved into each of its four faces is a giant, serene, half-smiling visage — the same face that will follow you through the entire city. Cross the moat, pass beneath it, and you are inside something that once held perhaps a hundred thousand people within walls three kilometres to a side.
Built around 1200 CE by King Jayavarman VII, Angkor Thom was the final and most ambitious capital of the Khmer empire. What remains today — temples, terraces, causeways, the great moat — occupies roughly 900 hectares and represents the concentrated ambition of one of history's most prolific royal builders.
💛 What travellers fall for
People who come back tend to skip the South Gate on return visits and enter instead through the East or North — fewer tuk-tuks, better light on the stone faces. They also linger on the inner wall of the Terrace of the Elephants rather than the outer face, where a second tier of carvings runs almost unseen at knee height.
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How Angkor Thom came to be
The ground beneath Angkor Thom had already been royal territory for centuries before Jayavarman VII arrived. Phimeanakas, a Hindu temple with a golden tower, was raised here by Rajendravarman in the 10th century; the Baphuon, a 50-metre pyramid temple, followed under Udayadityavarman II in the 11th. These structures predate the city walls entirely and stand today as monuments to the dynasties Jayavarman inherited.
Jayavarman VII came to power in 1181 after the Cham people had sacked the previous capital. His response was to build on a scale the empire had never seen — Angkor Thom, with its moat, its five gated causeways, its Bayon at the centre, took shape around 1200. The last temple constructed within the walls, Mangalartha, was dedicated in 1295. By 1609, when the first Western visitor recorded his impressions, the city was already empty.
Who and what shaped it
People who shaped it
Landmark buildings
See Angkor Thom in motion
Plan your visit
On the map
When to go
The dry season, November through April, brings cooler mornings and manageable heat by mid-afternoon — the most comfortable window for walking the site. The wet season, May through October, turns the surrounding forest deep green and thins the crowds, but expect heavy afternoon downpours and high humidity.
Right now
Background & history adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA) · specs from Wikidata (CC0) · weather from Open-Meteo · map data © OpenStreetMap contributors · photos from Wikimedia Commons / Unsplash with per-image credit. No third-party reviews or social posts reproduced.