Daun Penh & Riverside: Where Phnom Penh’s art scene meets its next property boom
A personal reflection on the district’s shifting identity — from gallery row to market stalls, $5 massages to 5-star hotels.
Street 172 still wears its old skin: $3 massage parlours and bars filled with weathered faces under greying hair, a holdover from a Phnom Penh that’s slowly fading.
But round the corner, Street 178 is quietly becoming the city’s most promising art gallery district — with the Royal University of Fine Arts and the National Museum of Cambodia both within walking distance, the creative pedigree is already built in. Walk a little further and you’re at Wat Phnom, the hilltop pagoda the whole city takes its name from, or down along Sothearos and Preah Sisowath — the riverfront boulevard that has carried everyone from Angkor kings to French colonists past these same streets.
Friends Café has planted its flag here, and the historic Mansion House sits waiting for its next chapter. With the Hyatt now welcoming Phnom Penh’s jet-set crowd, this pocket of Daun Penh may be on the verge of a full designer-district transformation.
Even the shophouses along 172 tell the story — noticeably better preserved than in most of the city, a quiet signal that this could be Daun Penh and Riverside’s next rising star.
The surrounding streets still lean heavily on hostess bars, each competing for a shrinking share of tourist and expat spend. As land values climb and rents follow, every vendor on this strip will feel the pressure to justify their square metre.
Then there’s Phsar Kandal — just south of the older, more chaotic Phsar Chas — and the open block once occupied by Prey Sar prison, which raises the obvious question: what comes next? The land immediately south of the market is shaping up to be a developer’s dream.
With both sites sitting so close to the Riverside strip, the well-known 136 and 178 “sweet spots,” and the steady flow of traffic north toward the Japanese Bridge, there’s a real possibility something special is brewing here — a district waiting for Phnom Penh’s next wave of architects and artists to claim it.
