On Wednesday, March 18, 2026, H.E. Dr. Phoeurng Sackona, Minister of Culture and Fine Arts, presided over a ceremony at the Angkor Conservation site in Siem Reap province to celebrate the successful restoration of a massive statue of the Dancing Shiva, one of the largest of its kind in Southeast Asia.
The restoration of this monumental statue took over five years (from 2020 to 2026) through a collaboration between the National Authority for Preah Vihear and the École française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO), with support from the Salinger Foundation/Heritage Alliance. This ancient masterpiece stands 5 meters tall, features 5 faces and 10 arms, and weighs approximately 7 tons. The statue collapsed in the 14th century, shattering into more than 10,000 fragments, and was further looted during the civil war. It is currently being housed temporarily at the Angkor Conservation center.
The Minister expressed her deep joy and profound gratitude to the experts from the EFEO, the technical committee, and heritage partners for their dedicated efforts in recovering and reassembling this thousand-year-old statue. She expressed her hope that this grand icon will eventually return to its original home at Koh Ker Temple to serve as a site of worship according to Khmer ancestral traditions and to attract a growing flow of tourists to the Koh Ker temple region.
