60 free Angkor Wat trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Angkor Wat trivia covers the largest religious monument on Earth and the empire that built it. Suryavarman II's temple to Vishnu went up in the first half of the 12th century, faces west when almost every other Khmer temple faces east, and is carved with the longest continuous stone frieze ever made, including 92 demons and 88 gods churning an ocean of milk with a giant snake. This quiz walks through the whole story: the etymology of the name, the Khmer kings from Jayavarman II to Jayavarman VII, the sandstone quarried at Mount Kulen and floated down canals, the moat and the quincunx of towers standing for Mount Meru, the slow conversion to Buddhism, Japanese pilgrims and Portuguese friars, Henri Mouhot's 1860 visit, the Khmer Rouge years, UNESCO listing and modern tourism. It also takes in the neighbours: Angkor Thom, the 216 faces of the Bayon, and the tree-strangled Ta Prohm of Tomb Raider fame. Easy questions suit anyone planning a trip to Siem Reap; the expert tier is for archaeology nerds. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Angkor Wat, Angkor and the Khmer Empire, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Angkor Wat is in which country?
Cambodia
It sits near the modern city of Siem Reap and is generally reckoned the largest religious complex in the world.
Q 02Which Khmer king commissioned Angkor Wat?
Suryavarman II
Work stopped when he died around 1150, leaving some of the bas-relief decoration unfinished.
Q 03Angkor Wat was originally dedicated to which Hindu god?
Vishnu
Its original name may have been Vrah Vishnuloka, 'the sacred dwelling of Vishnu'; the central statue was replaced by standing Buddhas centuries later.
Q 04What does the name Angkor Wat mean in Khmer?
City of Temples
'Angkor' comes ultimately from Sanskrit nagara, 'city', and 'wat' from vata, 'enclosure'.
Q 05Which direction does Angkor Wat face, unusually for a Khmer temple?
West
Scholars such as Coedès took the orientation as evidence that it was meant as Suryavarman II's funerary temple, since west is associated with death and with Vishnu.
Q 06The layout of Angkor Wat is generally interpreted as a model of which mythical mountain?
Mount Meru
The five central towers stand for its five peaks, and the walls and moat for the surrounding ranges and ocean.
Q 07How many towers make up the central quincunx at the heart of Angkor Wat?
Five
Four stand at the corners of the inner galleries around a taller central tower that rises 65 metres above the ground.
Q 08How tall is Angkor Wat's central tower above ground level?
65 m
The tower rises 43 metres above the inner gallery, and unlike earlier temple-mountains it is raised well above the four around it.
Q 09Roughly how wide is the moat that surrounds Angkor Wat?
190 m
The moat runs more than five kilometres around the outer wall and also served as a reservoir between the monsoon and dry seasons.
Q 10From which mountain was the sandstone for Angkor Wat quarried?
Mount Kulen
The quarries lie about 40 km to the north-east; a 35 km canal linking them to the temple was identified from satellite images in 2011.
Q 11What was the maximum weight of the individual sandstone blocks used to build Angkor Wat?
About 1.5 tons
Estimates put the total at five to ten million blocks, and the binding agent between them has still not been identified.
Q 12The most famous bas-relief on the eastern gallery of Angkor Wat depicts which Hindu scene?
The Churning of the Sea of Milk
Ninety-two asuras and eighty-eight devas heave on the serpent Vasuki under Vishnu's direction.
Q 13Which serpent is used as the churning rope in Angkor Wat's Sea of Milk relief?
Vasuki
Eleanor Mannikka counts the figures on each side as the number of days between solstice and equinox.
Q 21The Bayon temple at Angkor Thom has towers carved with roughly how many giant faces?
216
Most scholars think the serene faces are portraits of Jayavarman VII himself.
Q 22Which tree-root-tangled Angkor temple appeared in the 2001 film Lara Croft: Tomb Raider?
Ta Prohm
Founded as a monastery dedicated to Jayavarman VII's mother, it once needed almost 80,000 people to maintain it, including 615 dancers.
Q 23Ta Prohm was originally called Rajavihara, meaning what?
Royal Monastery
Jayavarman VII founded it as a Mahayana Buddhist monastery and centre of learning dedicated to his mother.
Q 14The bas-reliefs of the outer gallery mainly illustrate episodes from which two Hindu epics?
The Ramayana and the Mahabharata
Charles Higham called them 'the greatest known linear arrangement of stone carving'.
Q 15The southern gallery of Angkor Wat contains the temple's only historical relief, showing what?
A procession of Suryavarman II
It sits alongside depictions of the 32 hells and 37 heavens of Hinduism.
Q 16Angkor Wat's bas-reliefs run in which direction, taken as evidence of a funerary purpose?
Counter-clockwise
Brahminic funeral rites are performed in reverse order, and this prasavya direction reverses the normal sequence.
Q 17Roughly how many carved devatas (female deities) have been documented at Angkor Wat?
About 1,800
Sappho Marchal's 1927 study catalogued their hairstyles, headdresses and jewellery as evidence of real Angkorian fashion.
Q 18Which people sacked Angkor in 1178, about 27 years after the death of the king who built the temple?
The Chams
The Khmer Empire was then restored by Jayavarman VII, who built a new capital at Angkor Thom.
Q 19Which king built Angkor Thom and the Bayon after restoring the Khmer Empire?
Jayavarman VII
His wife Indradevi, a devout Mahayana Buddhist, is credited with encouraging his conversion, which began the shift of Angkor Wat toward Buddhism.
Q 20What does 'Angkor Thom' mean?
Great City
Its laterite walls are 3 km on each side and 8 m high, and a moat runs around them.
Q 24Angkor Wat appears on the country's national flag. When was it first placed there?
1863
Cambodia's is one of only four national flags in the world to feature a building.
Q 25The Cambodian flag is one of only four national flags to feature a building. Which of these is another?
Portugal
The others are San Marino and Spain, both of which show castles or towers in their coats of arms.
Q 26Which French naturalist popularised Angkor Wat in the West after visiting in 1860?
Henri Mouhot
He compared it to Solomon's temple built 'by some ancient Michelangelo'; his notes were published posthumously in 1864.
Q 27Where did the French explorer who popularised Angkor Wat in the West die in 1861?
Near Luang Prabang, Laos
He was 35; his tomb stands just outside Ban Phanom, east of the old Lao royal capital.
Q 28Which Portuguese Capuchin friar is one of the first Europeans recorded as visiting Angkor Wat, in 1586?
António da Madalena
He described it three years later to the historian Diogo do Couto, who wrote that it was 'like no other building in the world'.
Q 29Which Chinese diplomat visited Angkor in 1296 and wrote the only surviving eyewitness account of the Khmer capital?
Zhou Daguan
His roughly forty-page account, written for the Yuan dynasty, describes Khmer society during the reign of Indravarman III.
Q 30Seventeenth-century Japanese pilgrims at Angkor Wat believed they had found which Buddhist holy site?
Jetavana
Their inscriptions and maps treat the temple as the monastic garden associated with the Buddha in ancient Magadha; the oldest surviving plan, from 1715, is Japanese.