The initial design and construction of the temple took place during the reign of Suryavarman II in the first half of the 12th century. Dedicated to Vishnu, it was built as the temple and capital of the king's State. Work appears to have ended shortly after the death of the king, leaving some of the decoration on the bas-relief unfinished.In 1177, some 27 years after Suryavarman II 's death, Angkor was sacked by the Chams, the Khmer 's traditional enemies. The kingdom was then restored by a new ruler, Jayavarman VII, who set up a new capital and state temple a few kilometers northwards.Towards the end of the 12th century, Angkor Wat slowly converted from a Hindu worship center into Buddhism, which continues to the present day. Angkor Wat is unique among Angkor temples in that, although it was mostly forgotten after the 16th century, it was never abandoned entirely. Fourteen inscriptions dating back to the 17th century found in the Angkor area testify to Japanese Buddhist pilgrims who had set up small settlements alongside Khmer locals.The temple was then considered by the Japanese visitors as the Buddha 's famous Jetavana garden, originally located in the Magadha Kingdom of India. The best-known inscription tells of Ukondayu Kazufusa, who celebrated the Khmer New Year at Angkor Wat in 1632.
In 1860, French naturalist and explorer Henri Mouhot did effectively rediscover the temple. Unlike other early Western tourists, Mouhot found it hard to believe that the Khmers might have constructed the temple and erroneously dated it to about the same age as ancient Rome. His reports inspired the French Government to study the ruins, which was already an established presence in Indochina. Angkor Wat's true history was collected from accumulated stylistic and epigraphic evidence during subsequent clearing and restoration work.No ordinary dwellings or other signs of settlement were found, including cooking utensils, weapons, or clothing items usually found at ancient sites. Instead, only the monuments themselves are the evidence. An exploration commission was starting to draw up a list of main monuments. Subsequent missions copied inscriptions written on Angkor houses, so that scholars could translate them and know some of the history of Angkor.Angkor Wat 's magnificent artistic heritage and other Khmer monuments in the Angkor area led directly to France taking over Cambodia as a protectorate on August 11, 1863 and invading Siam to take over the ruins. This quickly led Cambodia to regain lands that had been under Siamese (Thai) rule since AD 1351 in the northwestern corner of the world.
1885 they had worked out a chronology of the rulers and developed outlines of a civilization description that had created the temple complex. In 1898 the French agreed to contribute significant funds for the survival of Angkor. Centuries of neglect had allowed the jungle to recapture many of the more important structures, and unless efforts were made to free the buildings from the embrace of vast banyan and silk-cotton trees, they could soon be crushed to destruction.
Angkor Wat was considerably restored in the 20th century. Gradually teams of laborers and archeologists pushed the jungle back and exposed the expanses of stone, allowing the sun to illuminate the temple's dark corners once more. Angkor Wat caught the attention and imagination of a wider audience in Europe when, during the 1931 Paris Colonial Exposition, the pavilion of the French protectorate of Cambodia as part of French Indochina recreated Angkor Wat's life-size replica.On 9 November 1953, Cambodia gained independence from France and has since controlled Angkor Wat. It is safe to say that this specific temple of Angkor Wat was instrumental in the formation of the modern and gradually globalized concept of built cultural heritage from the colonial period until the site 's nomination as UNESCO World Heritage in 1992.