A collapsed royal chedi that became an artificial hill, crowned in 1865 and holding relics presented by the Government of India to King Chulalongkorn in 1898 — and, for much of the nineteenth century, the city's crematory ground.
วัดสระเกศราชวรมหาวิหาร · Wat Saket Ratchaworamahawihan
| Official name | วัดสระเกศราชวรมหาวิหาร — Wat Saket Ratchaworamahawihan |
|---|---|
| Where | Ban Bat, Pom Prap Sattru Phai, Bangkok |
| Royal temple class | Second class royal temple, Ratchaworamahawihan (พระอารามหลวงชั้นโท ชนิดราชวรมหาวิหาร) The Department of Religious Affairs, Ministry of Culture, in its own e-service place register, which gives the grade and sub-rank in those words. The temple's own site states the same. This is the only temple in this batch whose grade we could read directly from a government temple register. |
| Monastic order | Not recorded in any register we could read. |
| Ancient monument | Carried in the national monument register; gazette announcement unread Wat Saket is carried in the Fine Arts Department register as site 0000009 with 152 individually catalogued structures, which is the department asserting registration in its own system. The gazette announcement itself was not read: the Royal Gazette site refused every request, and the department's own layer of gazetted monument land boundaries returned no row for this site. A newspaper report cites vol. 66, part 64, p. 5281 of 22 November 1949, and a 2023 boundary determination of 41 rai 3 ngan 98 sq wa signed on 25 August 2023. We record that as a lead for somebody who can open the Gazette, not as a citation. |
| Coordinates | 13.753914, 100.508595 Fine Arts Department national monument register, site 0000009 |
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.
Read the collapse story carefully. The temple's own wording is that the lower base of Rama III's intended great chedi could not carry the weight of the earth, stone and laterite fill, so the upper part subsided beyond repair. It does not say soft Bangkok subsoil, which is how the story is usually retold. The intended dimensions it gives — a base of about 100 metres and a height of about 18 metres — were never realised.
Wat Saket is the temple where a failure became the landmark. Rama III wanted a great chedi on the eastern edge of the city, on a scale the temple still records: a base of about a hundred metres and a height of about eighteen. The base could not carry the fill that was poured into it, the upper structure subsided, and the project was abandoned as unfixable. What was left was a mound. Rama IV did the intelligent thing and built on it — a bell-shaped chedi raised on the summit in about May 1865, a date the Fine Arts Department register independently confirms, giving the finished Borom Banphot a height of 63.1 metres. Completion is recorded on 4 January 1886, and Rama V staged court dance-drama to celebrate the second restoration in 1897.
The relic came next, and it is worth stating precisely because the popular version compresses it. In August 1898 the Chief Secretary to the Government of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh wrote to the Royal Asiatic Society that the Government of India had offered the bone relics found in the Piprahwa stupa to the King of Siam for distribution. Thai sources describe what arrived in the same terms without using the name Piprahwa: the temple and the Bangkok city government both say relics excavated from an old chedi mound at Kapilavastu, presented by the Government of India. The enshrinement took place on 23 May 1899, performed on the King's behalf by Prince Asdang Dejavudh. The identification of the mound with Piprahwa is a strong and standard inference and it is not a Thai source's claim, so this page attributes it rather than asserting it.
The temple's other history is harder. It stood outside the old city wall and served as the ground where the dead were brought. The National Assembly Library places a severe cholera outbreak in the reign of Rama II, records that the King ordered an expelling rite at the Dusit Maha Prasat throne hall, and says that with no treatment or prevention available the dead numbered many tens of thousands. That phrase is a magnitude, not a count, and it is what the authoritative source actually gives; the precise figures that circulate elsewhere do not appear in it. The same source records that vultures came down on the bodies in such numbers that the phrase the vultures of Wat Saket entered the language.
The fair is the temple's living present. The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration dates the tradition of wrapping the chedi in red cloth to the reign of Rama V and to the arrival of the Indian relic, and says it has run for over 130 years. It falls in the twelfth lunar month, from the eighth day of the waxing moon to the second of the waning, so it brackets Loi Krathong — ten days and nights in the modern form, seven in the original. Worshippers write their names on the red cloth before it goes around the chedi.
The number that matters is the one the government measured: the Borom Banphot stands 63.1 metres, according to the Fine Arts Department register, which also dates its construction to 1865. This is the single most defensible figure on this page. The heights of 77 and 80 metres that circulate widely appear in no official source we could reach.
We are not going to tell you how many steps there are. Every count in circulation — 344, 318, 300 — comes from travel sites, and no government, temple or academic source we reached states one. There is also a coincidence that ought to give anyone pause: the temple's registered street address is number 344. Until somebody counts them or finds a real source, the figure is not a fact.
The rest of the compound is registered structure by structure and much of it is older than the mount. The ordination hall stands 15 metres and dates from Rama I's reign, restored and enlarged under Rama III; its murals were painted during the major restoration under Rama VII, with an assembly of the heavens on the upper walls and ten Jataka tales across the lower half of both side walls. It was refurbished again in 1958. On 14 April 2022 the present King bestowed the name Phra Phuttha Mongkol Chinsihawichirmuni on the principal image.
The wihan is 17 metres, in two chambers, the eastern one with carved wooden door and window panels. The scripture hall is a 10-metre timber building of Rama I's reign, originally standing in the middle of a pond that has since been filled, and it too has carved panels. The residence of Rama I survives as a seven-bay hall of 11 metres with finely carved partitions. Around them are about a dozen catalogued satellite chedis, from 0.35 to 9.25 metres, all in the redented twelve-cornered form.
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 | 344 Chakkraphatdi Phong Road, Ban Bat, Pom Prap Sattru Phai. The mount is a walk up from the temple grounds at the eastern edge of Rattanakosin. |
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 Fine Arts Department register measures the Borom Banphot at 63.1 metres and dates its construction to 1865, which agrees with the temple's own account of Rama IV building a bell-shaped chedi on the summit that year. The heights of 77 and 80 metres that circulate widely are in no official source we could reach. As for the steps, no government, temple or academic source states a count. The commonly repeated 344 comes only from travel sites — and the temple's street address is also number 344, which is reason enough not to repeat it.
Because a chedi collapsed. Rama III intended a great chedi here on a scale the temple still records — a base of about a hundred metres, a height of about eighteen. The temple's own account is that the lower base could not bear the weight of the earth, stone and laterite fill poured into it, so the upper part subsided beyond repair. Note that its wording is about the fill load on the base, not about soft Bangkok subsoil, which is how the story is usually retold. Rama IV built a bell-shaped chedi on the resulting mound in 1865.
Relics presented by the Government of India to King Chulalongkorn. A letter published in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society in August 1898 records that the Government of India had offered the bone relics found in the Piprahwa stupa to the King of Siam for distribution. Thai sources describe the same gift without using the name Piprahwa: the temple and the Bangkok city government both say relics excavated from an old chedi mound at Kapilavastu, presented by the Government of India. They were enshrined on 23 May 1899, in a ceremony Prince Asdang Dejavudh performed on the King's behalf.
It is the hom pha daeng, and the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration dates the tradition to the reign of Rama V and the arrival of the Indian relic, saying it has now run for over 130 years. Worshippers write their names on the red cloth, which is then wrapped around the chedi that houses the relic. It happens during the temple fair, which falls in the twelfth lunar month from the eighth day of the waxing moon to the second day of the waning moon — so it brackets Loi Krathong. The modern fair runs ten days and nights; the original ran seven.
We could not establish either from a source we are prepared to cite, and we would rather say so than print a number. The Tourism Authority of Thailand's pages and the Bangkok city tourism site both build their content in the browser and returned nothing to any request, and the temple has no visitor page of its own. Hours, the fee, whether Thai nationals pay and whether a lift now serves the summit are all confidently stated on travel sites; none of that traces back to an official source. Check at the gate.
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.
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