Angkor Wat combines two basic architectural plans of the Khmer temple: the temple-mountain and the later galleried temple. It is built to represent Mount Meru, house of the devas in Hindu mythology: three rectangular galleries, each elevated above the next, are situated inside a moat more than 5 kilometers long and an outer wall 3.6 kilometers wide. A quincunx of towers stands in the temple 's centre. Like other Angkorian temples, Angkor Wat is geared toward the west; scholars are divided as to what this means. The temple is admired for the architecture's grandeur and harmony, its extensive bas-reliefs, and the numerous devatas which adorn its walls.
According to a legend, Indra had ordered the building of Angkor Wat to serve as a palace for his son Precha Ket Mealea. According to Chinese traveler Zhou Daguan of the 13th century, some claimed that a divine architect designed the temple in one night.
Angkor Wat has grown into a major tourist destination since the 1990's. In 1993, by 2004, there were only 7,650 visitors to the site, government figures show that 561,000 foreign visitors had arrived in the province of Siem Reap that year, about 50 percent of all foreign tourists in Cambodia. In 2007 the number reached over one million, and by 2012 it reached more than two million. Most visited Angkor Wat, which attracted over two million international visitors in 2013, and 2.6 million by 2018.
The site was managed between 1990 and 2016 by the private SOKIMEX company, which leased it from the Cambodian Government.The influx of tourists has caused relatively little damage so far, other than some graffiti; ropes and wooden steps have been introduced, respectively, to protect the bas-reliefs and floors. Tourism also provided some additional maintenance funds — as of 2000 approximately 28 percent of ticket revenue was spent on temples throughout the Angkor site — although most of the work is done by teams sponsored by foreign governments rather than by the Cambodian authorities.