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Angkor Wat was built for King Suryavarman II starting in the early 12th century as his state temple, dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu, close to the Khmer Empire's then capital. Unlike most Khmer state temples, it faces west rather than east -- an orientation still debated among scholars, though often linked to funerary symbolism.
Construction was interrupted by Suryavarman II's death, leaving parts of the temple's decoration unfinished to this day. The temple suffered a raid by the Chams, traditional enemies of the Khmer, in 1177. When Jayavarman VII took the throne, he built a new state temple a few kilometers north at Angkor Thom, and Angkor Wat's role as the empire's central temple ended. Over the centuries that followed, the temple's own religious identity shifted from Hindu to Theravada Buddhist -- but unlike nearly every other major Angkor temple, it was never actually abandoned.
Suryavarman II commissioned the temple that still bears his ambitions in stone, even unfinished. Jayavarman VII's decision to build elsewhere paradoxically preserved Angkor Wat, easing it out of imperial spotlight and into continuous religious use rather than the abandonment that befell its neighbors. Centuries later, the Portuguese monk Antonio da Magdalena became the first European to visit, in 1586, but it was the French naturalist Henri Mouhot's travel journals, published after his death in the 1860s, that popularized Angkor Wat in the West.
Angkor Wat's wide moat did more than complete its cosmological design -- it also kept the surrounding jungle from reclaiming the temple the way it overtook nearby sites like Ta Prohm, letting it remain close to intact through centuries most Angkor temples spent as ruins. The temple survived Cambodia's turbulent 20th century, including the Khmer Rouge era, relatively unscathed, and has since become the country's defining symbol -- Cambodia is the only country in the world with a building on its national flag.
Angkor Wat became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1992, part of the broader Angkor Archaeological Park listing, and tourism has grown enormously since the 1990s. International teams continue active conservation work today, even as the temple keeps functioning as a living Buddhist site -- monks and pilgrims share the grounds daily with the crowds that make it Cambodia's most-visited attraction.