The relic sanctuary above Chiang Mai — a second-class royal monastery on a mountain the Lawa held sacred long before it, reached by a naga stairway and a road built by hand in the 1930s.
วัดพระธาตุดอยสุเทพราชวรวิหาร · Wat Phra That Doi Suthep Ratchaworawihan
| Official name | วัดพระธาตุดอยสุเทพราชวรวิหาร — Wat Phra That Doi Suthep Ratchaworawihan |
|---|---|
| Where | Suthep, Mueang Chiang Mai, Chiang Mai |
| Royal temple class | Second class royal temple, Ratchaworawihan (พระอารามหลวงชั้นโท ชนิดราชวรวิหาร) The Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre's archaeology database, entry 568, drawing on the Fine Arts Department GIS record, states the temple is a second-class royal monastery of the Ratchaworawihan sub-rank and dates the elevation to 31 May 1963. The same entry records the sect as Maha Nikaya. The National Office of Buddhism register could not be reached during research, so the grade rests on this one route rather than on two independent government sources. |
| Monastic order | Maha Nikaya |
| Ancient monument | Registered national ancient monument Royal Gazette vol. 52, p. 3682, 8 March B.E. 2478 The Fine Arts Department's own register service returns the status line for site 0003575 as โบราณสถานขึ้นทะเบียน — registered ancient monument, the department's code 1 — and, unlike the five city temples below, this site carries no gazette land-boundary polygon in the department's mapping layer. The gazette citation is quoted from the Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre's entry and was not opened at the Gazette itself. One caution on the date: the Thai year then began in April, so 8 March B.E. 2478 falls in March 1936 by the Gregorian calendar, not 1935, and the department's regional office describes the same act as the first registration round of B.E. 2478. |
| Coordinates | 18.804754, 98.921355 Fine Arts Department national monument register, site 0003575 |
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.
No inscription or dated act of foundation for this temple was found in any source consulted. Four Thai state bodies give four different years, and the honest position is that the reign is established and the year is not. The Sirindhorn entry adds two later dates that are also worth treating with care: it says the chedi was widened under Phra Mueang Kaeo in B.E. 2069, a year after the same source has that king's reign ending.
Doi Suthep is a religious site twice over, and the older layer is not Buddhist. The mountain carries a cycle of Lawa legend — the hermit Wasudeva, who gives the mountain its name, the ogress Ya Sae and her son, the mountain pair of Doi Kham and Doi Suthep held as sacred heights — and the Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre's entry lists those stories before it lists any temple. A Fine Arts Department survey and excavation of the area in 2010 set out six cultural periods for the mountain, beginning with mesolithic flaked stone tools and a neolithic layer of cord-marked pottery, and noted plainly that for the legendary period there is no physical evidence at all beyond villagers' reports of Haripunchai votive tablets in a cave, since destroyed.
The Buddhist layer arrives in the second half of the fourteenth century with Phaya Kuena and the monk Sumana Thera, whom he invited from Sukhothai to bring the Sinhalese ordination lineage north. The Fine Arts Department's regional office puts it simply: Kuena built Wat Suan Dok and Wat Phra That Doi Suthep to enshrine relics, and names no year. Everyone who has since supplied a year has supplied a different one. What the record does carry is the sequence of later work. The temple's own chronicle, as catalogued by the anthropology centre, dates the first restoration to the reign of Phra Ket Klao in B.E. 2068. A century later, in B.E. 2100, the abbot Phra Maha Yanamongkhon Bodhi Thera built a stone stairway, replaced afterwards by the plastered naga stairway that is there now. In B.E. 2348 King Kawila restored the relic chedi, gave the four brass parasols at its corners, and is credited with the viharas.
The road is the modern part of the story and the most human. Until the 1930s the only way up was on foot. Between B.E. 2477 and 2478 the northern monk Khruba Sriwichai, with his disciples and with labour volunteered from villages across the north, built the road up the mountain — twelve kilometres, and the anthropology centre's entry records the tradition that it took four months and twenty-two days. The Fine Arts Department's regional office treats Khruba Sriwichai as a restoration movement in his own right, and notes the method he used on old chedis everywhere: build over the original rather than take it down. That is why so little Lanna fabric anywhere in the north is visible from outside.
The temple is also a pilgrimage destination in a specifically northern system. Lanna practice assigns each birth-year animal a Phra That to visit once in a lifetime, and the Tourism Authority records Doi Suthep as the temple of those born in the Year of the Goat. On Visakha Bucha the walk up the mountain is made on foot through the night, carrying candles and incense, and the relic is bathed at the full moon. It is, in the plainest sense, a working temple with a monastic school attached, not a viewing platform with a view.
The chedi is small for its fame and it is the point of the place. The anthropology centre describes it as a twelve-sided bell on a square redented base, with a band of moulding, three tiers of twelve-sided lotus base, five rings of malai thao, a twelve-sided bell and a twelve-sided harmika, the whole clad in jangko — gilded metal sheet, not paint. The ONEP register records that Phra Mueang Kaeo enlarged it from three wa a side to six, and from seven wa high to twelve, and that a later ruler gave gold weighing 1,700 baht to be beaten into the covering.
Five things stand around the relic and each means something. Four brass parasols at the corners, given by Kawila in B.E. 2348, for shade and shelter. The satti banchon, a fence of spears, recalling the soldiers who guarded the relics after the cremation before they were divided among cities. Four ho yo, small vihara-like shrines at the cardinal points holding images, for praise of the Buddha. Four ho thao lokaban at the corners for the Four Heavenly Kings — Kuvera north, Dhatarattha east, Virupakkha west, Virulhaka south. And the lotus jar, the purnaghata, for the flourishing of the religion in Lanna.
In the vihara on the northern side of the terrace stands Luang Pho Un Mueang, a gilded bronze image of the Chiang Mai school of the 22nd Buddhist century, 75 cm across the lap and 92 cm high to the base. The cloister around the chedi holds a row of maravijaya images of the 21st and 22nd Buddhist centuries at the same measurements, and its walls carry a mural cycle of the Buddha's life and the enshrining of the relic, painted by Bunpan Phongpradit in a manner that had already turned towards Western pictorial convention.
The stairway and the road are both monuments. The naga balustrade runs the length of the climb — ONEP gives the naga a length of 60 wa and records 173 steps for the older stairway of the abbot's time, while the Tourism Authority describes more than 300. Beside it runs Sriwichai Road, and the small temples built along it as it was made.
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 05:00–21:00, per the Tourism Authority of Thailand's Thai-language listing. |
|---|---|
| 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 | Two ways up from the road head: the naga stairway, or the funicular tram, which the Tourism Authority lists at 20 baht. The anthropology centre's entry adds that the stairway can be walked at any hour but that the national park keeps a checkpoint on the road between 20:00 and 06:00, and gives tram hours of 06:00–18:00 from a 2016 source — older than the tourism authority's listing and not confirmed as current. |
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.
Its age is not settled. Every Thai state source agrees the temple belongs to the reign of Phaya Kuena in the second half of the fourteenth century, and the Fine Arts Department's regional office ties it to the arrival of Phra Sumana Thera from Sukhothai without naming a year. Four other government sources name four different years — B.E. 1926, 1927, 1928 and 1929 — and the Tourism Authority names only the 19th Buddhist century. The reign is established. The year is not, and this page does not choose one.
It is the temple's own chronicle account, and it is told as tradition by the state sources rather than as a dated event. The Tamnan Phra That Doi Suthep says Sumana Thera brought two relics from the south, that one went into the chedi at Wat Suan Dok, and that the other was carried on a royal elephant which was allowed to choose the site, climbed the mountain, knelt at the summit and would go no further. No record confirms it and none is needed for it to matter: it is why the temple is where it is in the minds of the people who go there.
Nobody official agrees. The ONEP cultural-environment register, which is a government heritage database, gives 173 steps for the older stairway built in the abbot Phra Yanamongkhon Bodhi Thera's time, and a naga 60 wa long. The Tourism Authority of Thailand says visitors can climb a naga stairway of more than 300 steps. We found no survey count from the Fine Arts Department. If you want the number for its own sake, count them; if you want to know whether you can avoid them, you can, because there is a tram.
Northern Thai practice assigns each of the twelve birth-year animals a Phra That — a relic sanctuary — that a person born in that year should visit once in their life. The Tourism Authority records Wat Phra That Doi Suthep as the temple of those born in the Year of the Goat. Wat Phra Singh, in the city below, is the temple of the Year of the Dragon. The system spans the whole north and several of its temples sit outside Thailand's present borders, which is part of why it is interesting.
The Tourism Authority's current Thai-language listing gives daily hours of 05:00 to 21:00, which covers both dawn and the evening. The anthropology centre's entry notes separately that the naga stairway itself can be walked at any hour but that the national park operates a checkpoint on the road between 20:00 and 06:00. Those two statements are compatible but come from sources of different dates, so if you are planning around a specific hour it is worth calling ahead.
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 Chiang Mai’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.