The great walled hilltop monastery of Ko Kha, and the most complete surviving Lanna temple compound in the country — a gilded chedi inside a brick rampart, an open-sided wihan of B.E. 2019, the only Lanna cot-song paintings left in Thailand, and a camera obscura that has been working for five centuries.
วัดพระธาตุลำปางหลวง · Wat Phra That Lampang Luang
| Official name | วัดพระธาตุลำปางหลวง — Wat Phra That Lampang Luang |
|---|---|
| Where | Lampang Luang, Ko Kha, Lampang |
| Royal temple class | Not established from an official register. |
| Monastic order | Not recorded in any register we could read. |
| Ancient monument | Registered national ancient monument Royal Gazette vol. 52, p. 3698, 8 March B.E. 2478 (the national list of important ancient monuments); boundary of the monument's land, vol. 97, part 163, 21 October B.E. 2523; registration, vol. 113, part 65, 22 April B.E. 2529 Three separate gazette references, and none of them was read in this run from the Royal Gazette's own site, which has refused every request across six provinces of this guide. They are printed here because the Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre's archaeological database — a named research institution of the Ministry of Culture — publishes volume, part, page and date for each of the three in its entry for this monument, and that entry was read directly. The same entry gives the temple's land, including monastic land, as 37 rai 42 square wa. |
| Coordinates | 18.214208, 99.392183 Office of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy and Planning, cultural-environment register entry for วัดพระธาตุลำปางหลวง |
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.
There is a contradiction inside the state sources worth naming, because it is repeated rather than reasoned. The National Office of Buddhism's Lampang provincial office and the tourism authority both write that the temple has existed since the time of Queen Chamathewi, ราวปลายพุทธศตวรรษที่ 20 — around the end of the twentieth Buddhist century. Chamathewi belongs to the thirteenth Buddhist century and the twentieth is the fifteenth of the common era; the two halves of that sentence are some eight hundred years apart. The wording is identical on both sites, which makes it one formula copied twice rather than two sources agreeing. This guide dates the buildings it can date and leaves the foundation open.
Wat Phra That Lampang Luang sits on a low mound eighteen kilometres south-west of Lampang town, inside a brick rampart reached by a naga stairway and a gate arch of moulded stucco. The arrangement is what makes it important: a central gilded chedi with wihan on the cardinal sides and a cloister running round the whole, all of it still standing and all of it still in use. Very little else in the Lanna world survives as a complete plan rather than as a chedi with later buildings around it, which is why this compound is the reference point for what a northern Thai monastery looked like before the nineteenth century rebuilt most of them.
The documented history is a sequence of building campaigns rather than a beginning. The anthropology centre's archaeological database sets out three chronicle entries: a chedi raised nine wa wide and fifteen wa high in B.E. 1992; Chao Muen Kham Pek arriving to govern the city in B.E. 2019 and restoring the religion of the great relic; and Chao Muen Han Si Thattha Maha Suramontri building up the relic's platform in B.E. 2039. The tourism authority attaches the Wihan Luang to that B.E. 2019 campaign and the Wihan Nam Taem to B.E. 2044. Behind all of it is an origin the sources tell as tradition — the Buddha here in his lifetime, the monastery in Queen Chamathewi's age — and this guide keeps the two apart, because the state sources that carry the tradition also carry a date eight hundred years away from the queen they name in the same breath.
The temple is also where a fight for the city is remembered in a hole in a fence. In the eighteenth century a Burmese-appointed governor, Thao Mahayot, occupied the compound; a man from Ban Pratu Lai named Nan Thip Chang shot him and drove out the garrison, and went on to found the ruling house of Lampang. The bullet hole is shown in the brass railing round the chedi. It is a good illustration of what these walls actually were: a hilltop monastery in this region was a fortified place, and the rampart is not decorative.
The compound is a working temple and a museum at once. It holds the Phra Kaeo Don Tao, the jade image whose story belongs to another temple in this province and which was brought here for safety and never went back; the Phra Chao Sila in its own wihan; and, in the Wihan Nam Taem, the only Lanna paintings on cot-song panels — the boarded space between the roof tiers — left anywhere in Thailand. The tourism authority says plainly that those paintings are now much faded. That is worth knowing before the visit rather than after it.
The Fine Arts Department has been at work here for a long time: the anthropology centre records a restoration of the Wihan Luang in B.E. 2466 under the provincial ecclesiastical head, and a departmental restoration of all four cloister ranges in B.E. 2550 that adjusted the roof structure and columns. So the visitor is looking at old fabric that has been repeatedly and deliberately maintained, not at something left alone. Both facts are true at once and the page keeps them together.
The chedi: a Lanna bell on a lotus-and-crystal base, plated outside in thong changko, the brass-and-copper sheeting used across the north, with a gold-worked finial and repoussé panels. The tourism authority notes that this form is the model behind Phra That Hariphunchai and Phra Borommathat Chom Thong, which is the clearest single statement of the building's influence.
The bullet hole in the brass railing that rings the chedi, from Nan Thip Chang's fight with Thao Mahayot — pointed out on the tourism authority's own account of the temple, not a guide's embellishment.
The Wihan Luang: a large open-sided hall the tourism authority dates to B.E. 2019, with a gilded prasat canopy over Phra Chao Lan Thong, Phra Chao Than Chai behind it, and old painting on the cot-song boards showing the Ten Birth Tales and the Phrom Chak.
The Wihan Nam Taem, dated by the tourism authority to B.E. 2044: open to the roof, gold-line painting on red lacquer on the wall behind the principal image, and the last Lanna cot-song panel paintings in the country, now heavily faded. The bronze Buddha in the attitude of subduing Mara measures 1.25 metres at the lap and 1.25 metres high.
The Sum Phra Bat over the Buddha footprint, which the tourism authority dates to B.E. 1992: light through a small aperture throws an inverted image of the chedi and the wihan on the inside wall — a working camera obscura, five hundred years old. Women are not permitted inside it, which is a rule of the place and not an oversight.
The Wihan Phra Phuttha, brick and plaster in Chiang Saen manner and described by the tourism authority as not less than seven hundred years old, where the shadow image also appears; the Kuti Phra Kaeo, of not less than four hundred years, holding the Phra Kaeo Don Tao; and the Wihan Phra Chao Sila.
The temple museum in three buildings — carved architectural woodwork, sattaphan candle stands, monastic seating, ceramics, scales and bronzes, Lanna gongs and horse trappings — which the anthropology centre's museum database records as open daily 07.30–17.00 with no admission charge.
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 | Open daily 07.30–17.00. Two state sources agree: the Tourism Authority of Thailand's attraction page, read through a rendering browser, and the Lampang provincial public relations office. The anthropology centre's museum database gives the same hours for the temple museum inside the compound. |
|---|---|
| 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 | 271 Tambon Lampang Luang, Ko Kha district, Lampang 52130, about eighteen kilometres south-west of Lampang town — the address is the provincial public relations office's. The tourism authority lists parking and restrooms on site. |
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 buildings can be dated and the monastery cannot. The anthropology centre's archaeological database quotes chronicle entries for B.E. 1992, B.E. 2019 and B.E. 2039 describing a chedi raised, the relic's religion restored and its platform built up, and the tourism authority attaches the Wihan Luang to B.E. 2019, the Wihan Nam Taem to B.E. 2044 and the Sum Phra Bat to B.E. 1992. What no reachable source establishes is when a monastery was first made here. The state sources say it goes back to Queen Chamathewi and in the same sentence give a century eight hundred years later, which is a formula rather than a finding.
No, and two different images get confused at this point. The national palladium — the Emerald Buddha of Wat Phra Kaew in Bangkok — is recorded as having stood at Wat Phra Kaeo Don Tao in Lampang town for thirty-two years and then moved on. The image at Wat Phra That Lampang Luang is the Phra Kaeo Don Tao, a jade Buddha in the meditation attitude in Lanna style, which was brought from that temple and never returned. The tourism authority glosses it พระแก้วมรกต, which is where the confusion comes from.
Yes, and this is one of the few temples in this guide where the citations can be given. The Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre's archaeological database records the monument in the national list published in Royal Gazette vol. 52 at p. 3698 on 8 March B.E. 2478, a determination of the monument's land boundary in vol. 97 part 163 of 21 October B.E. 2523, and a registration in vol. 113 part 65 of 22 April B.E. 2529. The Royal Gazette's own site refused every request in this run, so those three are given on the database's authority and not as documents this guide has opened.
It is a camera obscura, and there are two of them. Light entering through a small aperture in the Sum Phra Bat, the shelter over the Buddha footprint that the tourism authority dates to B.E. 1992, projects an inverted image of the chedi and the wihan onto the interior wall; the same effect appears inside the Wihan Phra Phuttha. It is a physical effect of a pinhole, working continuously for five centuries. Women are not permitted inside the Sum Phra Bat, which the tourism authority states plainly.
Open every day from 07.30 to 17.00, on the agreement of two state sources — the Tourism Authority of Thailand's attraction page and the Lampang provincial public relations office. Neither publishes an admission charge for the temple, and the anthropology centre's museum database records that the museum inside the compound charges none. This guide prints no admission figure because no official source states one, which is not the same as saying entry is free.
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 Lampang’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.