Siem Reap's culture runs deeper than Angkor's sandstone. A generation of artists rebuilt what the Khmer Rouge erased — reviving shadow puppetry, apsara dance, silk ikat and lacquerware in workshops, schools and stages across the city.
Free 20-minute guided tours through working stone-carving, wood-sculpting and lacquer workshops, open 07:30–18:30. Founded 1992 to train rural youth; roughly 1,300 artisans now earn a living wage here. Silk-painting and gilding studios sit at the back.
The full mulberry-to-mensuration chain on one site: silkworm rearing sheds, reeling, ikat tie-dyeing and wooden handlooms weaving Khmer sampot. Free guided tours run 08:00–17:00 daily; the workshop feeds Artisans Angkor's boutiques.
Angkor's architectural prologue, 13 km east. Preah Ko (AD 879) shows six brick towers with intact lime-stucco carving and sandstone lintels; Bakong (AD 881) is the first sandstone temple-mountain — the structural experiment Angkor Wat later perfected.
Lok Theam trained at Artisans Angkor then built this compound of lacquer, painting and sculpture studios around a courtyard of Khmer antiques. Open 08:00–20:00; his hand-lacquered elephant panels and buffalo-horn work are made on site.
Eight galleries arranged by theme rather than chronology, opening with 1,000 Buddha images in a mirrored hall. Strong on Khmer epigraphy, Jayavarman VII portrait heads and the Hindu-to-Mahayana shift. Open 08:30–18:00.
One of Siem Reap's oldest pagodas, founded in the 18th century. The vihara holds rare late-19th-century murals of the Reamker — the Khmer Ramayana — including a panel showing French colonial figures in pith helmets smoking opium pipes.
Founded by Aki Ra, a former child soldier who cleared ordnance by hand; the display cases hold defused mines, mortars and cluster submunitions he recovered. Attached relief centre houses children injured by UXO. Open 07:30–17:30, 25 km north.
Graduates of the Battambang arts school founded by returning refugees in 1994 perform original narrative shows — Sokha, Khmer Metal, Eclipse — blending acrobatics, live band and painted backdrops. Nightly at 20:00 under the big top on Ring Road.
The 10th-century Banteay Srei, carved in pink sandstone at a miniature scale, holds Angkor's finest bas-relief — devata figures cut in such deep relief they read as sculpture. Built by a brahmin, not a king. Opens 07:00.
The original 1920s market behind the tourist stalls: prahok fermented fish paste in vats, palm sugar discs wrapped in leaves, kroeung spice pastes ground to order, and rows of Battambang oranges. Vendors trade in riel from 06:00.
Princess Buppha Devi's revived classical repertoire taught to village girls at a rural training centre. Afternoon rehearsals show the four codified hand gestures (kbach) and the robam tep apsara, performed in full silver-thread costume.
Sbek thom leather puppetry, a UNESCO-listed form nearly lost after 1979 — cowhide figures up to two metres tall, backlit against cloth while a narrator chants the Reamker. Small courtyard venue near Wat Damnak, 20:00 nightly.