A forest monastery at the foot of Doi Suthep built around a plastered chedi with brick tunnels cut beneath it, holding the only Lanna tunnel paintings anywhere — and, since the 1940s, a meditation centre.
วัดอุโมงค์ (สวนพุทธธรรม) · Wat Umong Suan Phutthatham
| Official name | วัดอุโมงค์ (สวนพุทธธรรม) — Wat Umong Suan Phutthatham |
|---|---|
| Where | Suthep, Mueang Chiang Mai, Chiang Mai |
| Royal temple class | Not established from an official register. |
| Monastic order | Maha Nikaya |
| Ancient monument | Registered national ancient monument The Fine Arts Department's register service returns the status for site 0003603, held under the official name วัดอุโมงค์(นอก) — Wat Umong Nok, the outer Wat Umong — as โบราณสถานขึ้นทะเบียนและกำหนดเขตที่ดินโบราณสถาน, registered with the monument land boundary determined, and a boundary polygon exists in the department's layer. The department's regional office lists วัดอุโมงค์(นอก) among the fifteen Chiang Mai monuments registered in B.E. 2478. Note that the register carries a separate site, 0003608, for วัดอุโมงค์(ใน) in Si Phum subdistrict — a different temple inside the walls, and the source of a persistent confusion described below. |
| Coordinates | 18.783399, 98.951758 Fine Arts Department national monument register, site 0003603 |
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 temple is popularly called seven hundred years old and its chedi is named for that figure, but no source consulted dates either the temple or the chedi with a document. Note also that the accounts differ on the tunnels themselves: the municipality describes four passages, three of which are visible from the front, while ONEP describes several interconnecting walkways without a count.
Wat Umong is the temple that most rewards knowing which one it is. There are two Wat Umong in Chiang Mai and the sources conflate them constantly. This one — the register calls it วัดอุโมงค์(นอก), the outer Wat Umong — sits in woodland outside the walls at the foot of Doi Suthep, and the tunnels are here. The other, Wat Umong Mahathera Chan, is a khamawasi or in-town monastery inside the walls in Si Phum subdistrict, formerly called Wat Pho Noi, which the Fine Arts Department's National Library says Phaya Kuena rebuilt for the same monk, with the work completed in B.E. 1918. Both are named for Thera Chan. Only one has tunnels.
Who built this one is genuinely disputed between government sources. The Tourism Authority and the ONEP register say Mangrai made the temple in a grove of eleven bamboo clumps and that Kuena added the tunnels for Thera Chan. Suthep Town Municipality has Mangrai founding Wat Wellukattharam for a Sinhalese monk, Phra Maha Kassapa Thera, and Kuena restoring it for Thera Chan and renaming it, at which point the chedi was plastered over and a tunnel of four connecting passages cut to the north of it. The Fine Arts Department's own library says Kuena built Wat Wellukattharam at the eleven bamboo clumps and gave it to Thera Chan outright. None of them cites a document. What all of them agree on is the monk: Thera Chan was a formidable scholar of the Tripitaka who kept to the forest, and the tunnels exist because a king wanted him to have somewhere quiet.
The paintings inside the tunnels are the reason this place matters to art history and they were very nearly lost. Suthep Municipality's account is unusually candid about it: the surviving work is on the vaulted ceilings, it had faded so badly that most people assumed there was nothing left, and it was a survey project that found far more than expected. The Fine Arts Department then put national budget behind a survey and conservation campaign running from late B.E. 2542 to the middle of B.E. 2543. Part of what the team found was accidental: rainwater seeping through cracks had laid down a crust of calcite over the paintings, hiding them entirely. Softening the crust chemically and paring it away with a blade brought the images back.
The modern chapter is the one that gives the temple its second name. After the fall of the Mangrai dynasty and under Burmese rule the compound was abandoned and fell in. It was cleared and rebuilt in the twentieth century by Chao Chuen Sirorot, who added new kuti and invited the monk Panyanantha Bhikkhu from Suan Mokkh in Chaiya to come and teach — which is how a ruined forest temple became Suan Phutthatham, a garden of the dhamma, and a meditation centre with a library, an open-air museum of broken images and a hall of dhamma-riddle paintings. It is a working monastery of the Maha Nikaya and, unlike the temples inside the moat, it is quiet.
The tunnels: brick passages built into the mound beneath the chedi rather than dug into rock, entered from the east. Suthep Town Municipality describes four, of which three are visible at the front, the central one — counted as the fourth — being the largest. Inside, the surviving paintings are on the curved ceilings, and they are faint; what you can see today is the result of the conservation campaign of B.E. 2542–2543.
The chedi above the tunnels is an early bell-form Lanna monument. The municipality's description sets it out: three round bases in diminishing tiers carrying a large bell, a square harmika above, and a conical top of plong chanai and pli, with rows of square recessed panels around the waist of each round base. It relates the form to a Pagan bell-chedi type and to the Thitsavadi temple at Pwasaw, and records a restoration under Phra Mueang Kaeo that added stucco ornament at the base and lotus-petal mouldings in the Mon-Burmese manner to the cone.
The grounds hold a replica Ashokan pillar, a stone inscription, a large bodhisattva figure, naga heads and a scattering of broken images set out as an open-air museum. The Dhammaghosa library, the hall of dhamma-riddle paintings and a memorial museum are all part of the twentieth-century layer.
It is a wooded compound rather than a courtyard, on the lower slope of Doi Suthep, and the walk between the elements of it is much of the experience.
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 05:00–20:00, 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 | 135 Moo 10, Suthep subdistrict, in woodland at the foot of Doi Suthep west of the old city and a short distance behind Chiang Mai University. The Tourism Authority lists parking on site and gives temple telephone numbers of 0 5327 3905 and 09 3278 7733. |
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.
Yes, and confusing them is the standard error. This one is Wat Umong Suan Phutthatham, which the Fine Arts Department register carries as Wat Umong Nok — the outer Wat Umong — in Suthep subdistrict, in woodland at the foot of the mountain. The other is Wat Umong Mahathera Chan, an in-town monastery inside the walls in Si Phum subdistrict, formerly Wat Pho Noi, which the department's National Library says Phaya Kuena rebuilt with the work completed in B.E. 1918. Both are named for the same monk. Only the outer one has tunnels.
Lanna wall painting, on the vaulted ceilings of the passages, and it is faint. Suthep Town Municipality's account explains why it survived at all: the paintings had faded to the point where most visitors assumed nothing remained, and rainwater seeping through cracks in the vault had laid a crust of calcite over them. A Fine Arts Department conservation campaign running from late B.E. 2542 to the middle of B.E. 2543 softened the crust chemically and pared it away, along with cleaning, consolidating the plaster and fixing the paint layer, and recorded the work in photographs, plans and line drawings.
For a monk who needed quiet. Every state account of this temple, however much they differ on who built what, agrees that the tunnels are associated with Phra Maha Thera Chan, a senior monk of Phaya Kuena's reign described by the Fine Arts Department as deeply learned in the Tripitaka and given to wandering in the forest to meditate. The tunnels are brick passages built into a mound rather than excavations in rock, and they give a cool, dark, silent space in a hot climate. The chedi sits directly above them.
Yes, and that is the twentieth-century layer of its history rather than the medieval one. After the compound had stood ruined through the Burmese period, Suthep Town Municipality records that Chao Chuen Sirorot cleared and restored it, built new monks' quarters, and invited Panyanantha Bhikkhu from Suan Mokkh in Chaiya, Surat Thani, to come and teach. That is where the second name Suan Phutthatham — the garden of the dhamma — comes from, and why the compound holds a library, a museum and a hall of dhamma-riddle paintings alongside the monument.
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.
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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.