Spread over a whopping 402 acres of land, breathing around Angkor Wat is allowing yourself to art and artistic details. Angkor Wat, a temple that hails back from the 12th century was originally built as a Hindu temple dedicated to the Lord Vishnu by the Khmer King Suryavarman II. Today it’s one the most visited place in Cambodia besides being the largest religious monument in the world

Here’s all you need to know about the same

Angkor Wat basically stands for ‘City of Temples’ and there’s no doubt why it’s called so. The temple was erected between A.D. 1113 and 1150 as a Vishnu Temple and later converted to use as a Buddhist Temple. Statutes of Buddha were added to the temple as the religion became stronger in its vicinity.

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Notably, Angkor Wat was designed to represent Mount Meru, which as per Hindu mythology is home to devas. Legends suggest that it took 300,000 people and 6,000 elephants and 30 years to build the temple.

Angkor Wat combines two basic plans of Khmer temple architecture: the temple-mountain and the later galleried temple. The temple, thus, is scattered on a platform raised higher than the city.

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Like most of the monuments from the history, the temple is surrounded by a moat. The temple has three rectangular galleries each level higher than the other.

The temple is also renowned for showcasing 3,000+ apsaras carved into its walls. However, most of them were damaged during a temple cleaning project. Nevertheless, they are being restored one apsara at a time.

Interestingly, it’s believed that Khmer bricks were bonded together using a vegetable compound and not mortar.