Preah Vihear Temple

Construction at Preah Vihear began in the early 9th century and continued over some three centuries, with its earliest surviving structures dating to the Koh Ker period in the early 10th century and the bulk of the temple built under the Khmer kings Suryavarman I (r. 1006-1050) and Suryavarman II (r. 1113-1150), the same monarch later responsible for Angkor Wat. Unlike the typical rectangular layout of most Angkorian temples, Preah Vihear stretches along a long north-south processional axis, its five gopuras and a causeway climbing a 525-meter cliff in the Dangrek Mountains to a sanctuary originally dedicated to Shiva, worshipped at the site under mountain-god names such as Sikharesvara and Bhadresvara.

As Hindu practice waned across the Khmer world in the centuries that followed, the temple gradually came to see Buddhist religious use instead, and today it survives purely as an archaeological and heritage monument rather than a functioning place of worship of either tradition, inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2008. Its dramatic clifftop setting directly on the modern Cambodia-Thailand border has also made it the focus of a long-running territorial dispute between the two countries, a political dimension distinct from, though inseparable from any discussion of, its documented history as a major Hindu religious monument.