Wat Ounalom

Wat Ounalom is a huge pagoda complex that serves as the religious administrative centre of Cambodia: it is home to the country’s highest-ranking monk and is considered the centre of Cambodian Buddhism. The complex sits at a large intersection several blocks north of the Royal Palace, opposite the riverfront.

The main viharn, built in 1952, has three floors, with paintings of the Buddha on the top. Inside are niche rooms holding rare bronze Buddha images. The complex is easily reached on foot from the downtown riverfront and is best visited during daylight hours, or in the evening when Buddhist ceremonies are held.

A relic of the Buddha. Wat Ounalom was originally constructed in 1443 to house a hair from the Buddha’s eyebrow, and once accommodated more than 500 monks. The main feature of the complex is the large stupa that contains this relic, believed to date back to the Angkor era.

Under the Khmer Rouge. During the Khmer Rouge regime, the residing abbot, Samdech Huot Tat, and a large number of monks were massacred, and the temple was looted. A marble Buddha from Burma was destroyed and a cement Buddha statue was stripped of its silver covering, yet the relic itself was left undisturbed. A statue of Huot Tat was thrown into the river but was later recovered and reinstalled on the second floor of the main building, near a statue of a patriarch of the Thommayut Buddhist sect.

A lost library. The complex once housed 30,000 titles in the religious library of the Buddhist Institute, which was also destroyed by the Khmer Rouge. The library has since been revived on nearby Sihanouk Boulevard.