Angkor National Museum, Siem Reap
Angkor National Museum in Siem Reap showcases Khmer artifacts and galleries that explain Angkor's temples and history before or after exploring the ruins.
Angkor National Museum, Siem Reap
The Angkor National Museum sits on the road between Siem Reap town and the temples, and is the most efficient way to make sense of what the ruins are. Its galleries run through the rise of the Khmer empire, its religion, its kings and its architecture, using sculpture recovered from the sites themselves.
The best-known room holds a thousand Buddha images, ranged in tiers and lit low. Others deal with the shift between Hinduism and Buddhism that shaped which gods appear where, with the reigns of Suryavarman II and Jayavarman VII, and with the writing on the inscriptions that gives most of what is known about dates and names.
Going first makes the temples legible - the difference between a lintel being decoration and being a specific scene from the Ramayana. It is a short distance from the town centre.
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