A ruin on the west of the island holding the largest reclining Buddha in the old city — forty-two metres of brick and stucco lying in the open, ringed by the columns of a hall that has gone.
วัดโลกยสุธาราม · Wat Lokayasutharam
| Official name | วัดโลกยสุธาราม — Wat Lokayasutharam |
|---|---|
| Where | Pratu Chai, Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya, Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya |
| Royal temple class | Not established from an official register. |
| Monastic order | Not recorded in any register we could read. |
| Ancient monument | Carried in the national monument register; gazette announcement unread No Royal Gazette announcement naming this temple was found in any acceptable source. A registration date of 18 March B.E. 2484 circulates for it, but only on encyclopaedia and social-media pages, and it is not repeated here. The temple lies inside the 1,810-rai archaeological zone declared over the island in B.E. 2519 — dated 27 July by the Fine Arts Department and 17 August by ONEP — and the Fine Arts Department has an open restoration procurement for the reclining Buddha, which confirms the site is in its care. |
| World Heritage | Historic City of Ayutthaya (576) |
Pratu Chai, Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya, Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya
The exact location has not been confirmed yet.
Thai temple histories mix two different kinds of statement, and this guide keeps them apart. What a register, a gazette entry, an inscription or a dated royal act shows is one thing. What the chronicles and the temple itself hold is another, and it is worth telling as what it is.
This is a temple whose founding is genuinely unknown, and the two Thai state bodies that comment do not agree even on which half of the Ayutthaya period it belongs to. No founder's name exists in any source consulted. Saying so is the accurate answer, not a hole in the research.
Wat Lokayasutharam sits behind the old royal palace on the west of the island, a short walk from Wat Phra Si Sanphet and in the middle of a residential quarter rather than in a manicured park. Almost nothing is known about how it came to be. The Fine Arts Department's own park guide says so directly: no evidence survives for the construction history or the builder, and the temple can be dated only by looking at it — the structure of the prang and the character of its stucco put it, in the department's reading, in the early Ayutthaya period alongside Wat Mahathat, Wat Ratchaburana and Wat Som. The Ayutthaya provincial government's page presumes something else entirely, a middle-Ayutthaya date in the reign of Nakhon Inthrathirat around B.E. 1995, and the year it gives falls after the reign it names. Two state bodies, two readings, and no document behind either.
What the record does carry is a mention in use. The Tourism Authority of Thailand notes that the temple appears in the Ayutthaya chronicle as a place on the route King Borommakot took to venerate the reclining Buddha, which tells you that in the eighteenth century this was a destination for the king himself. It also tells you what the temple was for. The image is the point of the place, and everything else here is arranged around it.
The reclining Buddha is forty-two metres long and eight metres high, built of brick and finished in stucco, lying with the head to the north on a lotus base. Around it stand twenty-four octagonal brick columns, which is the clearest evidence of what is missing: the image was almost certainly roofed by a vihara that has since gone, and nobody can say when it fell. The image has been restored more than once, and here too the state sources disagree. The Fine Arts Department's park guide gives the most recent restoration as B.E. 2399, when the whole body was recased and the crowned head redone. The provincial government's page instead describes a restoration in B.E. 2497 carried out by the Liquor Factory together with the department, a B.E. 2499 intervention that it thinks added the crowned head to an image originally without one, and a further restoration in B.E. 2532 by Khunying Rabiap Thamrong-nawasawat and her family. This page prints all of those and reconciles none of them.
It is a ruin and a working shrine at the same time, which is the ordinary condition of Ayutthaya and rarely the way it is described. The Fine Arts Department's own one-day itinerary for the heritage city lists this temple as a place to pay respects to the great reclining Buddha in the open air, and associates it with the folk category of metta mahaniyom, loving-kindness and the regard of others. People come here to make offerings rather than to photograph a ruin, and the difference is worth carrying with you through the gate.
The reclining Buddha, forty-two metres long and eight metres high, brick built and stuccoed, head to the north on a carved lotus base, the feet squared off with the toes of equal length. The Tourism Authority calls it the largest reclining Buddha on the island.
Twenty-four octagonal brick columns standing around the image — what is left of the hall that once covered it. No source found gives the date it came down.
The principal prang, which the Tourism Authority puts at about thirty metres high, and which the Fine Arts Department dates on stylistic grounds by comparison with the prangs at Wat Mahathat and Wat Ratchaburana.
Three viharas in front of the main prang, and the traces of a large building and a cloister across the rest of the compound.
The offerings. This is an unticketed ruin in the middle of a neighbourhood and it is used, not merely visited.
This is a working place of worship for millions of people rather than an attraction, and it is treated as one at the gate. Where a figure below is blank, no source we are prepared to cite states it.
| Hours | Not established from an official source. |
|---|---|
| Admission | Not established from an official source. |
| Dress | Not established from an official source. |
| Photography | No source we found states a rule, so we print none. |
| Getting there | West of the old royal palace on the island, at 199/29 U Thong Road in Pratu Chai subdistrict, near Wat Woracheatharam and Wat Wora Pho. There is parking. The Ayutthaya Historical Park office answers on 0 3524 2286. |
Every temple reference repeats claims nobody has checked. These are the ones we went looking for and could not stand up, listed so you know exactly where this page stops.
Nobody knows, and the Fine Arts Department says so. Its own park guide states that no evidence survives for the temple's construction history or its builder, and dates the site to the early Ayutthaya period purely by comparing the prang's structure and stucco with other temples. The Ayutthaya provincial government presumes a middle-Ayutthaya date instead, and the year it gives falls after the reign it attributes the building to. There is no inscription, no dated act, and no founder's name anywhere in the record we could reach.
Forty-two metres long and eight metres high, according to both the Tourism Authority of Thailand and the Ayutthaya provincial government, which agree on the figures. It is built of brick and finished in stucco, and lies with the head to the north resting on a carved lotus base, the soles of the feet squared off with the toes made equal in length. The Tourism Authority describes it as the largest reclining Buddha on the island city.
Almost certainly not. Twenty-four octagonal brick columns stand around the image, and the Ayutthaya provincial government reads them as the remains of a vihara that once covered it. No source consulted says when that hall came down — most likely at the fall of the city in 1767, but nothing found in this research states it, so the collapse is undated here. What survives of the roof is the ring of columns.
No ticket should be expected. The Fine Arts Department's own services page for Ayutthaya Historical Park lists the six monuments that charge admission — Wat Phra Si Sanphet with the old royal palace, Wat Phra Ram, Wat Mahathat, Wat Ratchaburana, Wat Chaiwatthanaram and Wat Maheyong — and this temple is not one of them. No official source states outright that entry is free or publishes opening hours for it, so this page records the absence rather than converting it into a claim.
Before you go, read the guide to Buddhism and temple etiquette in Thailand — dress, footwear, where photography is not welcome and how to behave around monks. The rest of Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya’s temples are covered here too.
Every temple here sits in a place worth reading about on its own terms. The nationwide temple guide covers the other provinces to the same documentary standard as this page, and says on each one what the record establishes and what it does not.
If you are thinking about more than a visit: work out which Thai visa route fits your situation, and see what is available to rent and buy in residences across Thailand.
Every fact on this page is drawn from the sources above. Where they disagree, this page says so rather than choosing silently. Registrations, fees, hours and access change; confirm anything you are relying on with the authority concerned. BAANLYY LLC is a Nevada company and a listing portal, does not represent any temple, and offers no legal or religious advice.