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This stunning religious monument should be on everyones wanderlist.

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Angkor Wat is the largest religious monument in the world. It covers more than 400 acres in northern Cambodia, an area four times the size of Vatican City. Its five towers rise above the jungle canopy, and its surrounding moat stretches for more than three miles around the entire complex.

King Suryavarman II of the Khmer Empire ordered its construction in the 12th century, building it between 1113 and 1150 AD. Temple inscriptions suggest it took approximately 30 years, 300,000 workers, and an estimated 6,000 elephants to complete.

The temple was built to represent Mount Meru, the sacred home of the gods in Hindu mythology. Its five central towers represent the five peaks of the mountain. The massive outer walls represent the surrounding mountain ranges, and the moat represents the oceans at the edge of the world. Every part of the design was intentional.

Originally dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu, Angkor Wat gradually became a Buddhist temple from the late 12th century onward. That shift is part of why it survived when so many other ancient sites didn't. Monks kept the temple in use and in repair for centuries.

The walls are covered in over 1,200 square meters of bas-relief carvings, some of the finest stone carving ever produced. More than 2,000 carved figures of heavenly nymphs, called apsaras, decorate the surfaces, and no two are identical. The outer gallery alone stretches for nearly 600 meters.

When French explorer Henri Mouhot encountered the site in the 1840s, he wrote that it was "grander than anything left to us by Greece or Rome." Angkor Wat is the only temple in the world to appear on a national flag, and Cambodia has carried its image for more than 150 years.

Arrive before sunrise and watch the light hit the towers over the reflection pool. Walk the outer galleries slowly and follow the carved stories on the walls. The nearby temple of Ta Prohm, where giant tree roots have grown through the stone, is equally stunning and only a few minutes away.