Angkor Wat Trivia
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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.
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Q 01Angkor Wat is in which country?
Cambodia
Angkor Wat stands near Siem Reap in north-western Cambodia and is widely reckoned the largest religious monument in the world by area.
Q 02Which Khmer king commissioned Angkor Wat?
Suryavarman II
Suryavarman II, who took the throne in 1113, commissioned Angkor Wat; work stopped at his death around 1150, leaving some bas-reliefs 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 Wat means 'City of Temples' (or 'Temple City'): 'Angkor' derives from Sanskrit nagara, 'city', and 'wat' from vata, 'enclosure', the Khmer word for a temple.
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
Mount Meru, the cosmic mountain of Hindu and Buddhist cosmology: the five central towers stand for its peaks, the walls for the surrounding ranges and the moat for the ocean.
Q 07Besides sandstone, which stone was used for Angkor Wat's outer wall and hidden structural parts?
Laterite
Laterite, a clay-rich rock that hardens on exposure to air, was used for the outer wall and concealed structural parts, while sandstone was reserved for visible surfaces and carving.
Q 08How tall is Angkor Wat's central tower above ground level?
65 m
The central tower rises about 65 metres above ground level, or 43 metres above the inner gallery, standing well above the four corner towers around it.
Q 09Roughly how wide is the moat that surrounds Angkor Wat?
190 m
The moat is about 190 metres wide and runs more than five kilometres around the outer wall, standing for the cosmic ocean that surrounds Mount Meru.
Q 10From which mountain was the sandstone for Angkor Wat quarried?
Mount Kulen
Mount Kulen (Phnom Kulen), about 40 km north-east of the temple, supplied the sandstone; the blocks were floated to the site along canals and the Siem Reap river.
Q 11What was the maximum weight of the individual sandstone blocks used to build Angkor Wat?
About 1.5 tons
The heaviest blocks weigh about 1.5 tons each; the temple used an estimated five to ten million sandstone blocks, fitted so closely that no mortar is visible between them.
Q 12The most famous bas-relief on the eastern gallery of Angkor Wat depicts which Hindu scene?
The Churning of the Sea of Milk
The Churning of the Sea of Milk, on the east gallery's southern half, shows 92 asuras and 88 devas pulling a serpent to churn the ocean for the elixir of immortality under Vishnu's direction.
Q 13Which serpent is used as the churning rope in Angkor Wat's Sea of Milk relief?
Vasuki
Q 21The Bayon temple at Angkor Thom has towers carved with roughly how many giant faces?
216
About 216 faces look out from the Bayon's towers, four to a tower on some 54 towers originally; they are usually read as Jayavarman VII in the guise of the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara.
Q 22Which tree-root-tangled Angkor temple appeared in the 2001 film Lara Croft: Tomb Raider?
Ta Prohm
Ta Prohm, left much as found with silk-cotton and strangler-fig roots gripping its galleries, was Jayavarman VII's foundation for his mother; its stele says 79,365 people served it, including 615 dancers.
Q 23Ta Prohm was originally called Rajavihara, meaning what?
Royal Monastery
Rajavihara means 'Royal Monastery' (raja, king; vihara, monastery); Jayavarman VII founded it in 1186 as a Mahayana Buddhist monastery and university dedicated to his mother.
Vasuki, the serpent king, is wrapped around Mount Mandara as the churning rope, pulled by the asuras at his head and the devas at his tail while Vishnu directs the churning.
Q 14The bas-reliefs of Angkor Wat's outer gallery mainly illustrate episodes from which two texts?
The Ramayana and the Mahabharata
The Ramayana and the Mahabharata supply most scenes: the Battle of Lanka fills the west gallery's northern half and the Battle of Kurukshetra its southern half.
Q 15The southern gallery of Angkor Wat contains the temple's only historical relief, showing what?
A procession of Suryavarman II
The temple's only historical scene, a procession of Suryavarman II with his court and army, fills the south gallery's western half; its eastern half shows the 37 heavens and 32 hells.
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
About 1,800 devatas (an inventory counts 1,796) adorn the walls; Sappho Marchal's 1927 study catalogued their hairstyles, headdresses and jewellery as evidence of real Angkorian fashion.
Q 18Which people sacked Angkor in 1177, a generation after Angkor Wat was built?
The Chams
The Chams of Champa, led by Jaya Indravarman IV, attacked by river and sacked Angkor in 1177; the Khmer recovered within a few years under a new king.
Q 19Which king built Angkor Thom and the Bayon after restoring the Khmer Empire?
Jayavarman VII
Jayavarman VII, who drove out the Chams and ruled from 1181, built the walled capital of Angkor Thom with the Bayon at its centre and was a devout Mahayana Buddhist.
Q 20What does 'Angkor Thom' mean?
Great City
Angkor Thom means 'Great City' in Khmer; Jayavarman VII's capital is enclosed by laterite walls about 3 km on each side and 8 m high, with a moat outside them.
Q 24In which year did Angkor Wat first appear on Cambodia's national flag?
1863
Angkor Wat has appeared on Cambodia's flag since the first version was introduced in 1863, the year the kingdom became a French protectorate.
Q 25Which type of vault roofs the galleries of Angkor Wat?
Corbelled vault
Khmer builders did not use the true arch; Angkor Wat's galleries are roofed with corbelled vaults, in which each course of stone overhangs the one below until the two sides meet.
Q 26Which French naturalist popularised Angkor Wat in the West after visiting in 1860?
Henri Mouhot
Henri Mouhot, a naturalist collecting specimens for British societies, reached Angkor in 1860 and likened it to Solomon's temple raised by 'some ancient Michelangelo'; his journals 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
Henri Mouhot died of malaria near Luang Prabang, Laos, in November 1861, aged 35; his tomb stands by the Nam Khan river outside Ban Phanom, east of the old royal capital.
Q 28Which Portuguese Capuchin friar is one of the first Europeans recorded as visiting Angkor Wat, in 1586?
António da Madalena
António da Madalena, a Portuguese Capuchin friar, visited Angkor in 1586 and in 1589 described it to the chronicler 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
Zhou Daguan, a Yuan dynasty envoy, stayed at Angkor from 1296 to 1297; his short Customs of Cambodia is the only surviving first-hand description of the Khmer capital, written under Indravarman III.
Q 30Seventeenth-century Japanese pilgrims at Angkor Wat believed they had found which Buddhist holy site?
Jetavana
Jetavana, the Indian garden monastery where the Buddha preached; seventeenth-century Japanese pilgrims left inscriptions at Angkor Wat, one dated 1632, treating the temple as that holy site.