Wat Chaiwatthanaram

On the west bank of the Chao Phraya, just outside the old island city of Ayutthaya, a tall Khmer-style tower rises from a square platform ringed by smaller towers and a gallery of crowned stupas. Wat Chaiwatthanaram was founded in 1630 by King Prasat Thong as the first great temple of his reign, on land associated with his mother's residence; the name can be read as "temple of the long reign and glorious era". Its silhouette, reflected at evening in the river, is one of the most recognisable images of the old Siamese capital.

The plan is a diagram in brick. The central prang, about 35 metres tall, rises from a raised platform with four smaller prangs around it; the whole is enclosed by a cross-shaped gallery punctuated by eight chapels shaped like chedis, known as the Meru, a name taken from the mountain at the centre of the Buddhist cosmos. The borrowing from Khmer architecture gives the temple a stepped, radiating geometry that looks different from every side.

The walls once carried much more than bare brick. The eight chapels were decorated with twelve stucco reliefs of scenes from the life of the Buddha, and around 120 seated Buddha images lined the gallery walls, probably painted black and gold. What visitors see now is what survived the Burmese sack of Ayutthaya in 1767, after which the temple was abandoned and looted.

Restoration by the Thai Fine Arts Department began only in 1987, and the temple opened to visitors in 1992. It went under some two metres of water in the great floods of 2011 and was repaired again. The best time is late afternoon, when the low sun turns the brick deep orange and the towers stand in silhouette against the western sky.

Getting there

The temple is on the west bank of the Chao Phraya, about 4 km from the centre of Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya. Don Mueang International Airport (DMK) in northern Bangkok is about 48 km away. Trains run from Bangkok to Ayutthaya station, and from there it is a short tuk-tuk, taxi or bicycle ride; the temple is also a regular stop for river boats on the Chao Phraya.