Angkor Wat, Siem Reap

Angkor Wat was built in the first half of the twelfth century for Suryavarman II as a temple to Vishnu, and later became a Buddhist monastery - which is why, unlike most of Angkor, it was never abandoned and never wholly reclaimed by forest. It is the largest religious structure in the world by area, and it appears on the Cambodian flag.

The temple is a model of the Hindu cosmos: a moat standing for the ocean, a walled enclosure for the mountains at the world's edge, and five towers for the peaks of Mount Meru. The scale registers slowly - a causeway of nearly half a kilometre crosses the moat before the outer gallery is even reached. That gallery carries eight hundred metres of continuous bas-relief, including the Churning of the Sea of Milk and a procession of Suryavarman's army, all of it carved in the twelfth century.

Angkor Wat faces west, unusually, so the classic view is at sunrise from across the reflecting pools. It is one temple within the much larger Angkor Archaeological Park, north of Siem Reap town.