Phnom Penh Attractions

Apsaras Dance Performance

Phnom Penh is not as active as Siem Reap when it comes to Khmer performing arts. However, some of the performing arts schools in the city are open to the public during the day, allowing visitors the opportunity to observe dancers in training.

Among these, a must-see is the Sovanna Phum Art Association. Started in 1994 by a group of students, cultural shows are staged every Friday and Saturday night at 19:30. These include shadow puppet theatre, classical Apsara dancing and folk and mask dances. On sale at the gallery at the theatre are shadow puppets made from leather, musical instruments and more. Another fine theatre to visit is the Chatomuk Theatre at Sisowath Quay. Read More...

Choeung Ek Execution Area

15km southwest of the city centre is one of the many sites of Khmer Rouge mass executions. The exhumed skulls of some 8,000 souls, arranged by sex and age, are displayed behind glass panels in the Memorial Stupa, which was erected in 1988. The pleasant orchard setting does little to dispel the horror engendered by this grim sight, as Choeung Ek is just one of thousands of recorded mass grave sites throughout the country, and is by no means, the largest. On May 9th each year a memorial service is conducted at the stupa, in memory of the estimated 1.7 million people who died during the genocide.  Read More...

Independence Monument

It commemorates the end of French's rule over Cambodia in 1953. The one hundred nagas and motifs can be seen in historic, cultural and modern day. It is also used to commemorate the souls of fallen to combatants who down their lives for the country's freedom. 

National Museum of Arts

North of the palace grounds, the building was designed in Khmer-style, in 1920, by a French architect, and contains important artifacts and sculptures from the Angkor era and earlier.

Oudong

Located to the north approximately 40km from Phnom Penh, and located on a hill overlooking vast plains, this site is famous for cultural patrimonies and used to be a capital city between 1618-1866. 

Phnom Tamao Zoo

This recently opened zoo and wildlife rescue centre, 40km outside the city, was set up to preserve and rescue rare and endangered local wildlife including tiger, lion, deer, bear, peacock, heron, crocodile and turtle. Eighty hectares of the total area have been established as a national zoo and up to 1,200 hectares have been reserved for its future extension and development. 

Royal Palace & Silver Pagoda

The Khmer-style Throne Hall was built in 1866, to serve as the residence of the King of Cambodia, his family and foreign dignitaries, as a venue for the performance of court ceremonies and rituals and as a symbol of the Kingdom. South of the Throne Hall are the Royal Treasury and the Villa of Napoleon III, built in Egypt in 1866, for the opening of the Suez Canal, and was later presented to the Cambodian king as a gift.

The famous Silver Pagoda, originally constructed of wood in 1866, was expanded in 1962 by King Sihanouk who had the floor inlaid with 5,329 solid silver tiles, hence its name. Inside the Palace grounds, traffic noise is thankfully blocked off by the high walls and the various Royal buildings sit in tranquility amidst the manicured tropical gardens. Read More...

Tuol Sleng Museum

Tuol Svay Prey High School was originally built as a secondary school in 1960, during the reign of Preah Batnorodom Sihanouk. The Khmer Rouge converted it into a torture and interrogation centre to extract 'confessions' of anti-government sentiment. Many victims were women and children incarcerated along with the 'suspected' father. Documents recovered indicate that over 17,000 persons had been imprisoned there between1975 and 1978, of whom only seven are known to have survived.

Tuol Sleng reopened in 1980 as a historical museum memorializing the genocidal crimes of the Khmer Rouge regime. It is open to the public and thousands of Cambodians and foreigners have visited it, bizarrely attracted to the testimony of man’s inhumanity to man. Read More...

Wat Ounalom

Built in 1443 to enshrine a sacred hair of the Buddha, and located north of the National Museum of Arts, this temple is considered the seat of Cambodian Buddhism.

When the Khmer Rouge evacuated Phnom Penh in 1975, they vandalized the building and murdered the Abbot along with many of the 500 monks who lived there. 

Wat Phnom

On a hill to the north of the city, and restored or reconstructed in 1434, 1806, 1894 and 1926, Wat Phnom is a symbol of the capital city Phnom Penh and regularly used for prayer, small offerings, and meditation.