Srah Srang
Ancient royal reservoir with a laterite landing stage guarded by stone lions and naga balustrades.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Srah Srang in Siem Reap opens with a tenth-century inscription warning elephants away from a royal reservoir, and traces it to a Buddhist minister, Kavindrarimathana, who organized an extraordinary run of construction under King Rajendravarman II. It follows his building projects, including the temple mountain of Pre Rup, and the landing stage that Jayavarman VII rebuilt in laterite and sandstone two and a half centuries later, with naga serpents and stone lions still guarding its steps.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
West Baray
Vast hand-cut medieval reservoir once irrigating rice paddies, its flooded center island yielding the empire's largest bronze statue.
Prasat Bat Chum
Trio of tenth-century brick shrines whose doorjamb inscriptions name the minister who engineered them.
Eastern Mebon Temple
Pyramid-shaped island sanctuary of brick and sandstone towers guarded by life-size stone elephants at each tier.
Bakong Temples
Ninth-century sandstone pyramid guarded by stone elephants and lion-flanked stairways.
Pre Rup Temple
Ten-century brick and laterite pyramid whose stone vat still splits scholars between crematorium and sacred-bull shrine.
Lolei Temple
Four ninth-century brick sanctuary towers built as an ancestral shrine on a now-vanished island reservoir.