Baphuon Park

Address: Baphuon temple, Angkor, Siem Reap province, Cambodia

Hours: Daylight hours (Angkor Park pass)

Baphuon is a large temple-mountain in the Angkor complex, built in the 11th century and notable for its scale and terraced structure within Angkor Thom. The monument underwent a long, complex restoration involving dismantling and reassembly and is a prominent feature north of the Bayon within the archaeological park.

• Restoration: Extensive restoration and anastylosis were carried out over several decades by international teams, with the temple reassembled and reopened in the early 21st century.

Baphuon is located inside Angkor Thom, a short distance from the Bayon and the Terrace of the Elephants; accessible by the central Angkor circuit from Siem Reap.

• Visit early to avoid crowds at Angkor's main circuit and to catch cooler conditions in the complex.
• Look for recent consolidation work on the Baphuon - much has been moved and reset during past restorations.

Built more than a century before Angkor Thom rose around it, Baphuon was the Mount Meru-inspired state temple of Udayadityavarman II and one of the largest structures of the Angkor era. The Chinese emissary Zhou Daguan described it as the “Tower of Bronze”: five stone tiers rising some 24 m, once topped by a wooden structure sheathed in bronze that may have reached 50 m above the ground.

Imposing in its day, the temple collapsed under its own weight before French explorers reached Angkor in the 19th century. In the 1960s it was dismantled and its roughly 300,000 stones were labelled for reassembly by anastylosis, but the Cambodian civil war halted the work for 25 years. Reconstruction of the world’s largest “jigsaw puzzle” has continued into recent times, with some of the original participants returning to help. Don’t miss the enormous reclining Buddha on the western side, fashioned from the temple’s own rubble in the 16th century.

The eastern entrance, towards which the temple is oriented, lies a short walk northwest of the Bayon. A unique 200 m elevated causeway crosses ponds to a central cruciform pavilion, once carved with the small vertical bas-relief panels distinctive to Baphuon; the best surviving examples are on the western gopura behind the temple. From the north side a doorway in the enclosure wall leads through the Royal Palace grounds to the Phimeanakas, and on to the Terrace of the Elephants and the Terrace of the Leper King.