Rama V's temple, built in Italian marble to Prince Naris's design as compensation for two temples cleared for Dusit Palace, holding fifty-two Buddha images assembled by Prince Damrong as a comparative collection.
วัดเบญจมบพิตรดุสิตวนาราม ราชวรวิหาร · Wat Benchamabophit Dusitwanaram Ratchaworawihan
| Official name | วัดเบญจมบพิตรดุสิตวนาราม ราชวรวิหาร — Wat Benchamabophit Dusitwanaram Ratchaworawihan |
|---|---|
| Where | Dusit, Dusit, Bangkok |
| Royal temple class | First class royal temple, Ratchaworawihan (พระอารามหลวงชั้นเอก ชนิดราชวรวิหาร) Silpakorn University's temple database, whose own bibliography cites the Department of Religious Affairs volume on royal monasteries. Not read from the National Office of Buddhism register, which refused every request during research. |
| Monastic order | Maha Nikaya |
| Ancient monument | Registered national ancient monument Royal Gazette vol. 118, part 113 ง, 14 November 2001, as entry 166 of the national register of ancient monuments. The temple's three cast-iron bridges were registered separately and much earlier, by Royal Gazette vol. 92, part 61, 18 March 1975. The citations are taken from the national register of ancient monuments printed as an appendix to the Ministry of Interior's monument-care standard, produced with Silpakorn University's Faculty of Archaeology. The Gazette documents themselves were not opened — the Gazette site refused every request — so the page number is not known. Separately, the Phra Wihara Somdet, the cloister around the ordination hall and the Sala Bannarosphak were designated a National Museum by Royal Gazette vol. 78, part 94, of 14 November 1961. |
Dusit, Dusit, Bangkok
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.
The name has two official readings and they are sequential rather than rival. Silpakorn's account is that Rama IV named it for the five royal persons and that Rama V then gave it the fuller name meaning the temple of the king of the fifth reign. The Silpakorn text is internally inconsistent about the spelling change that distinguishes the two, and the only source that resolves it cleanly is an unattributable booklet, so we set out both readings and do not assert the spelling detail. Note also that two of the five royal persons were princesses, so five royal persons is a better translation than five princes. No source we found gives a completion year for the ordination hall; the widely cited 1911 is unverified.
This is the most self-conscious temple in Bangkok, and it is worth knowing why before you look at it. When Rama V laid out Dusit Palace two temples were dissolved to make room, and rebuilding this one was the compensating act. Silpakorn University's temple database records the mechanism in the Thai term for it: phatikam. The King presided over the binding of the boundary in 1899 and laid the foundation stone of the ordination hall in 1901. He did not live to see it finished — he died in 1910, and Rama VI completed the marble, the finials, the throne and the painted ornament.
The architect was Prince Naris, whom the sources are unanimous about, and the material was marble imported from Italy. Be careful with that sentence, because the version you have read is probably tighter than the evidence. Four independent sources say Italy. Not one official source we could reach names Carrara. The single document that does name it also names a supplier in Genoa and says the stone came from both, and it goes out of its way to reject a further myth — that this was surplus marble from the Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall. So: Italian marble, tendered to Italian suppliers on Prince Naris's own measured patterns. Carrara alone is an oversimplification.
The cloister is the reason this temple matters beyond its looks. Rama V commanded Prince Damrong Rajanubhab to find exemplary Buddha images in Bangkok, across Thailand and abroad, and fifty-two were placed around the ordination hall — the last acquired after the King's death. In an address to the Siam Society here on 25 June 1927 Prince Damrong set out the intention in his own words: images made in different countries and different periods, gathered and displayed so that the public might see the various types in historical sequence. The three selection criteria were that each be by a master hand, that each differ from the others, and that all be of roughly the same size.
The Fine Arts Department then adds a qualification that popular accounts leave out, and it is the sort of honesty this project exists to preserve: not all fifty-two are ancient originals. Where no genuine antique of the right size could be found, an enlargement of a small image, a reduction of a large one, or a same-size cast of a stone image was made instead. Describing the gallery as fifty-two antique Buddhas would be repeating a claim the department itself declines. The department also records what collecting cost: one image from Chiang Saen travelled by boat down the Mekong, into the Kok river, ashore at Chiang Rai and then on men's shoulders to Phayao.
The King's ashes are here. Silpakorn's account is that Rama V expressed the wish that they be interred beneath the jewelled pedestal of the principal image, and that Rama VI carried it out. The Thai term used is ashes, not bone relics, and the distinction is worth keeping. The principal image itself is a replica: Rama V ordered it cast in 1901 from the Phra Buddha Chinnarat at Wat Phra Si Rattana Mahathat in Phitsanulok, cast in sections in October, finished at the Naval Department and carried into the ordination hall that December.
The ordination hall is a chaturamuk — a four-porched cruciform building facing east, with projecting porches front and rear and a five-tiered roof of yellow curved tiles with praying-deity eaves tiles, clad in white marble throughout and ringed by its cloister. Each of the four gables carries a different royal seal. The window exteriors are set with bronze reliefs of Mara bearers, mirrored inside in gold-on-black lacquer, and the door and window arches are set with coloured glass — genuinely unusual in a Thai temple, though we could establish nothing beyond its existence.
The bronze door panels on three sides carry the assault of Mara at the front, the Chulamani chedi to the north and the Buddha's descent from Tavatimsa to the south. Eight painted niches inside show the eight great chedis of Siam: Lopburi, Phra That Phanom at Nakhon Phanom, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Chai Mongkhon at Ayutthaya, Sukhothai, Phra Pathom at Nakhon Pathom, Hariphunchai at Lamphun, and Phra Si Rattana Mahathat.
The cloister is marble by the measured piece: the floor cut in pattern throughout, sixty-four columns of solid round marble and twenty-eight square columns faced in marble slab, gilded lotus capitals inlaid with glass, all beams in gold-on-black lacquer, and 610 stars on a vermilion ceiling. Its gables carry the seals of the ten ministries as Rama V reorganised the government — a detail almost nobody points out and one of the most specific things in the building.
Outside, the temple sits against Khlong Prem Prachakon between Dusit Palace, the Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall, Chitralada Villa, the zoo and Government House, walled, with matching openwork cast-iron gate arches on all four sides. Three cast-iron bridges with concrete arched decks and Thai-pattern balustrades cross the canal — Saphan Phra Rup, Saphan Thuai and Saphan Nga — and all three are registered ancient monuments in their own right, gazetted in 1975 with their own survey coordinates.
And the ordination hall is on the money. The Treasury Department's own description of the reverse of the circulating five-baht coin is the ordination hall of Wat Benchamabophit Dusitwanaram. It is the coin, not a banknote; we found no Bank of Thailand source putting the temple on a note, and no evidence that it is.
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 | The two official sources disagree. A Thai government page gives Monday to Saturday 08:00–17:00 and Sundays and public holidays 10:00–17:00; the Tourism Authority of Thailand says daily 08:30–17:30. The National Museum inside the temple — the Phra Wihara Somdet, the cloister and the Sala Bannarosphak — is given as daily 09:00–16:00, free. |
|---|---|
| Admission | Thai nationals: free. Foreign visitors: 50 baht. |
| Dress | Modest dress. The government's wording is to avoid sleeveless tops, shorts and open sandals. |
| Photography | No source we found states a rule, so we print none. |
| Getting there | Si Ayutthaya Road, Dusit. The nearest MRT is Sam Yot but it is a long way off; a taxi or bus onward is the practical answer. Buses 72, 503, 157 and 510. There is parking beside the temple. |
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.
It is made of marble imported from Italy — that much is confirmed by four independent sources including the Fine Arts Department, the tourism authority and Silpakorn University. None of them names Carrara. The only document we found that does also names a supplier at Genoa and says the stone came from both, and it explicitly rejects a further myth: that this was marble left over from building the Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall. Prince Naris took the measurements himself, made the patterns and put them out to tender with Italian suppliers.
Both, in sequence, and that is a better story than either alone. Silpakorn University's temple database records that Rama IV named the temple for five royal persons — the prince who had mustered troops here during the Anuwong rebellion and four relatives who restored it with him, of whom two were princesses. Rama V then gave it the fuller name understood as the temple of the king of the fifth reign, adding the suffix Dusitwanaram. The five memorial chedis in front of the temple were built for those five royal persons, one each.
No, and it does not pretend to be. It is a replica of the Phra Buddha Chinnarat at Wat Phra Si Rattana Mahathat in Phitsanulok, which Rama V ordered cast in 1901 — modelled by Phra Prasit Patima, cast in sections in October of that year with the King presiding, floated to the Naval Department to be finished, and carried in procession into the ordination hall that December. King Chulalongkorn's ashes lie beneath its jewelled pedestal, at his own expressed wish, placed there by his son Rama VI.
A deliberate comparative collection, assembled by Prince Damrong Rajanubhab on Rama V's command from Bangkok, from across Thailand and from abroad. In a 1927 address at the temple Prince Damrong described the aim as gathering images made in different countries and different periods so that the public could see the various types in sequence, chosen so that each was by a master hand, each differed from the others, and all were about the same size. The fifty-second arrived after the King's death. Not all are ancient originals — the Fine Arts Department says some were enlarged, reduced or recast to fit.
The five-baht circulating coin. The Treasury Department, which issues it, describes the reverse as the ordination hall of Wat Benchamabophit Dusitwanaram. It is a coin and not a banknote — we found no Bank of Thailand source putting the temple on any note and no evidence that it appears on one, so if you see the claim made about a banknote, it is wrong.
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.