The royal temple of Taksin's Thonburi capital, where the Emerald Buddha was kept from 1779 to 1784, with a porcelain-clad prang laid out as a model of the Buddhist universe.
วัดอรุณราชวรารามราชวรมหาวิหาร · Wat Arun Ratchawararam Ratchaworamahawihan
| Official name | วัดอรุณราชวรารามราชวรมหาวิหาร — Wat Arun Ratchawararam Ratchaworamahawihan |
|---|---|
| Where | Wat Arun, Bangkok Yai, Bangkok |
| Royal temple class | First class royal temple, Ratchaworamahawihan (พระอารามหลวงชั้นเอก ชนิดราชวรมหาวิหาร) Fine Arts Department publications, including the catalogue record for its own 1968 monograph on the temple and its 2017 restoration announcement. Note that a second Fine Arts Department page, the National Museum Bangkok's, gives the sub-rank as Woramahawihan instead; the monograph record is the more formal of the two, and we flag the disagreement rather than hide it. |
| Monastic order | Not recorded in any register we could read. |
| Ancient monument | Carried in the national monument register; gazette announcement unread Wat Arun is carried in the Fine Arts Department register as site 0000140, with 141 individually registered component structures — the prang, the satellite prangs, the mondops, the ordination hall, the small Ayutthaya-period bot, the yaksha figures and eleven separate groupings of stone figures among them. The department's spatial layer of gazetted monument land boundaries holds 196 rows for Bangkok and none of them is Wat Arun. The Fine Arts Department's own index of its gazette announcements points to vol. 66, part 64, 22 November 1949, p. 5280 as the likely instrument, but the Gazette's server returned an error and its search sat behind a challenge, so nobody has read the schedule to confirm the temple appears in it. We therefore cite no gazette reference. |
| Coordinates | 13.743795, 100.489202 Fine Arts Department national monument register, site 0000140 |
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.
The physical evidence for a pre-Thonburi temple is real but indirect: two standing buildings, the small ordination hall and the small wihan, are described as the temple's original Ayutthaya-period ones. That supports an early date. It does not evidence the name.
Wat Arun is the temple of the capital that lasted fifteen years. When Taksin established Thonburi and pushed his palace walls outward, the existing temple ended up inside the royal precinct, which is why it had no monks in residence: the same reasoning that governs Wat Phra Kaew across the river. For five years, from 1779 to 1784, it held both the Emerald Buddha and the Phra Bang, brought back from Vientiane. When the capital crossed the river the images went with it, and Wat Arun became what it is now — a temple that is looked at from the other bank far more often than it is entered.
The prang everyone photographs is not the one Taksin knew. Thailand's UNESCO submission puts the original at sixteen metres and says a new one was built over it on Rama III's order. Rama II had already restored the temple and renamed it Wat Arun Ratchatharam, and had the principal image cast; Rama IV finished the prang and gave the temple its present name. So the silhouette is a nineteenth-century Bangkok statement about a Thonburi site, which is a more interesting thing than an ancient tower.
The design is a cosmological diagram and the Fine Arts Department reads it as one. The central prang is Mount Meru, the axis of the universe, which is why Indra rides the three-headed Erawan in a niche on each of its four faces. The four satellite prangs are the four great continents. On the second terrace, four mondops hold the four great events of the Buddha's life — birth to the north, enlightenment to the east, the first sermon to the south, the parinirvana to the west.
The department's own scholarship is more careful than the guidebooks about one detail worth passing on. In the niches of the satellite prangs stands a white-bodied figure with a sword, mounted on a white horse. It is routinely identified as one of the Four Guardian Kings. A Fine Arts Department archaeologist argues against that reading — the four are not differentiated as the Guardian Kings would be — and canvasses the alternatives: Vayu the wind god, the moon god, Kalki, or the universal monarch. The department does not settle it, and neither do we.
The five-year restoration of the prang, from 2013 to 2017, is the most recent chapter and the most contested. It was run by the Archaeology Division of the Fine Arts Department, and when the scaffolding came down the public reaction was that the tower had been made white and new-looking. The department's clarification, issued by its Director-General on 16 August 2017, is that the whiteness is not paint: black algae staining was cleaned off and fresh plaster applied by the traditional fermented-lime method, whose colour is naturally white. Its stated aim was to retain the original form, craftsmanship and materials, and the works were recorded in stills, three-dimensional scans and measured drawings. The department published a two-hundred-page account of the project afterwards.
Published heights for the central prang genuinely disagree, so here are both with their sources rather than one number: Thailand's UNESCO tentative-list submission says 61.20 metres, built over an original of sixteen metres; a Thai government page says over eighty metres. We found no Fine Arts Department measurement. Treat any single figure you see elsewhere with suspicion.
The surface is the point. The prang is faced in coloured glazed tile and fragments of benjarong porcelain from China, and the government's own description ties the material to the trade and cultural relations of the early Bangkok period. There is a directly documented instance nearby: the outer wall of the wihan is clad in glazed tiles that Rama III ordered from China. We found no source of any kind describing seashell in the decoration, so this page does not mention it as a material.
Read a satellite prang upwards and it tells you what it is. Kinnara and kinnaree occupy the base niches; above them alternating demon and monkey figures carry the bowl moulding; above that a niche holds the disputed rider on a white horse; and at the summit Garuda seizes a naga with devas in salutation beneath a gilt nophasun finial. The mondops between them repeat the kinnara motif, with kumbhanda demons as bearers on the north and south and gandharvas on the east and west.
The ordination hall is Rama II's. Its principal image is Phra Phuttha Thammisarat Lokathatdilok in the subduing-Mara posture, and the royal ashes of Rama II are contained in the pedestal beneath it, not in the image. The roof is double-tiered in yellow tile edged with leaf green, and the base curves in the ship-hull profile. Murals on all four walls carry the life of the Buddha, the assault of Mara and the Vessantara Jataka.
Count the Chinese stone figures. A hundred and forty-four green granite figures described as naval soldiers stand in a row inside the cloister; eight granite figures — the Eight Immortals — are set inside the marble octagonal chedis at the corners of the ordination hall; green sandstone kinnari in Chinese manner stand behind the riverside pavilions. The Fine Arts Department documents, in general terms, that stone sculpture of this period arrived in Siam as ballast in junks returning from the China trade; it does not say so of Wat Arun's figures specifically, and the inference, though standard, is an inference.
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 | Daily 08:00–18:00. |
|---|---|
| Admission | Thai nationals: free. Foreign visitors: 100 baht. |
| Dress | Modest dress: no shorts, no sleeveless or off-shoulder tops, no flip-flops. |
| Photography | No source we found states a rule, so we print none. |
| Getting there | MRT Sanam Chai exit 1, then the cross-river ferry from Tha Tien; or the Chao Phraya express boat to the Wat Arun pier. Buses 1, 3, 25, 32, 44, 47, 53, 82, 508 and 512 stop at Tha Tien for the ferry. |
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.
The honest answer is that the official figures disagree. Thailand's own UNESCO tentative-list submission gives 61.20 metres, built over an earlier prang of sixteen metres. A Thai government tourism page says over eighty metres. We found no measurement published by the Fine Arts Department, which has restored the structure twice in living memory and would be the natural authority. Where sources this close to the subject differ by twenty metres, printing one number as fact is a choice, not a finding.
Yes, and it is one of the best-documented things about the temple. Thailand's UNESCO tentative-list submission records that King Taksin enshrined the Emerald Buddha and the Phra Bang here for about five years, from 1779 to 1784, both brought back from Vientiane. During the Thonburi period the temple stood inside the enlarged palace precinct and had no resident monks. When the capital moved across the river in 1784 the Emerald Buddha went with it to the new chapel royal at Wat Phra Kaew.
The Fine Arts Department's Archaeology Division restored the prang over five years, from 2013 to 2017, and the finished appearance drew public criticism that the tower had been made to look new. The department's Director-General addressed it directly on 16 August 2017: the whiteness is not paint. Black algae staining was cleaned off and new plaster applied using fermented lime by the traditional method, and that plaster is naturally white. The department says the work retained the original form, craftsmanship and materials and was recorded in photographs, three-dimensional scans and drawings.
The Fine Arts Department says it is, giving the earlier names Wat Makok and Wat Makok Nok, but no source we consulted supports that with an inscription, a chronicle citation or an excavation report. The physical evidence is indirect and reasonably good: the small ordination hall and the small wihan are both described as the temple's original Ayutthaya-period buildings, which argues for a pre-Thonburi foundation. It does not evidence the name, and the story that King Taksin arrived at dawn and renamed it Wat Chaeng appears in none of the official sources.
The whole layout is a model of the Buddhist universe, and the Fine Arts Department reads it that way. The central prang is Mount Meru, the axis of the world, which is why Indra rides the three-headed elephant Erawan in a niche on each of its four faces. The four satellite prangs represent the four great continents. Between them on the second terrace stand four mondops holding the four great events of the Buddha's life: birth to the north, enlightenment to the east, the first sermon to the south and the parinirvana to the west.
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 Bangkok’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.