Three laterite towers in a row on a mound west of the railway, joined by covered passages, carrying Bayon-period Khmer carving — and a monument that the state's own sources cannot agree was Mahayana or Vajrayana, or which flanking tower held which deity.
ปรางค์สามยอด · Prang Sam Yot
| Official name | ปรางค์สามยอด — Prang Sam Yot |
|---|---|
| Where | Tha Hin, Mueang Lopburi, Lopburi |
| 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. 119, special part 119 ง, p. 10, 4 December B.E. 2545 Two instruments, and the second was read in full in this run. The monument was registered by the same ประกาศกรมศิลปากร กำหนดจำนวนโบราณสถานสำหรับชาติ of 2 August B.E. 2479, at vol. 53 p. 904, as item 7 under Lopburi. That announcement fixed no monument land. The gap was closed sixty-six years later by a ประกาศกรมศิลปากร เรื่อง กำหนดเขตที่ดินโบราณสถาน made under section 7 of the Ancient Monuments Act B.E. 2504, published at vol. 119, special part 119 ง, p. 10, on 4 December B.E. 2545, issued on 6 November B.E. 2544 and signed by Group Captain Awut Ngoenchuklin as Director-General, which sets the monument at about 3 rai 2 ngan 54 square wa. The text of that announcement recites the 1936 registration by volume, page and date and says in terms that no land boundary had been fixed by it — which is the department's own confirmation that the 1936 lists are treated as registrations under the current Act. The department's live register carries the same 3-2-54 figure as the monument area. A second and different figure sits beside it in the same record: the state land document 231/2486, land number 490, at 3 rai 2 ngan 35 square wa. They are different instruments and need not agree, but the register prints both without saying so. |
| Coordinates | 14.803250, 100.614011 Fine Arts Department heritage GIS register, monument 0000704, recorded by GPS |
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.
On when the use changed, no state source names a dated act. The department says King Narai restored the towers and built a vihara in front of them; the municipality says he converted the place into a Buddhist temple. The conversion is told here as tradition and the vihara is dated on its own architecture.
Prang Sam Yot is the image Lopburi is known by, and almost everything popularly said about it is more confident than the record. Three towers stand in a row on a low two-tier base facing east, built of laterite and sandstone, joined by covered passages formed where their side porches meet. The plan overall is cruciform, roughly 45.6 metres north to south and 48 metres east to west. It sits on state land in Fine Arts Department custody, and the department's register describes it plainly as a deserted monument, now restored and in fairly complete condition.
Call it what it is: this is a Khmer sanctuary, not a wat. Every state instrument that names it — the registration of B.E. 2479, the boundary announcement of B.E. 2545, the current admission-fee regulation and the department's register — writes ปรางค์สามยอด without the honorific พระ, and the register carries no sangha, no royal grade and no sect for it. The forms พระปรางค์สามยอด and even วัดพระปรางค์สามยอด are in circulation, including on government pages, but they are not what the instruments say.
What it was built for is genuinely contested inside the state. The Fine Arts Department's register says Mahayana Buddhist, of about the eighteenth Buddhist century, and reads the three towers as the Mahayana trikaya: a Naga-protected sandstone Buddha in the centre, now in the Somdet Phra Narai National Museum, with Avalokiteshvara to the north and Prajnaparamita to the south. The Lopburi public relations office and the municipality say Vajrayana, built under Jayavarman VII for the city of Lavo — and they put Lokeshvara in the south tower and Prajnaparamita in the north, exactly the other way round from the department. A university source agrees on Vajrayana and adds a later adaptation to Theravada use. This page prints the disagreement rather than choosing, because a guide that names a tower on the page is going to be wrong by one of two state sources whichever it picks.
One further claim circulates and does not survive checking. Mueang Lopburi municipality's page says the sanctuary was converted into a Hindu shrine with the bases of Shiva lingam standing in all three towers before King Narai made it a Buddhist temple. That page cites nothing; the department's register does not mention a Hindu phase or a lingam at all, and the university source says positively that there is none. It is recorded here as unverified and not repeated as history.
The building history of the modern era is documented in unusual detail, and it starts earlier than the registration. In B.E. 2469 the Royal Institute inserted concrete shoring to hold the towers up — ten years before the monument was on any list, and a datable, visible, non-original material in a laterite Khmer building. Then a long departmental sequence: the pediment in 2521, the north stair in 2526, vibration testing by the Asian Institute of Technology in 2527 and 2528, a foundation assessment in 2530, annual condition surveys from 2531 to 2534, the north tower restored in 2536, general restoration and a test excavation in 2537, further restoration in 2548 and the south tower in 2549.
The practicalities below come from the Tourism Authority of Thailand and from the ministerial regulation that sets the fee, and they do not agree with each other on the price. Where they differ, the gazette governs.
Three towers in a row on a two-tier base, laterite and sandstone, facing east, joined by chanuan passages where the side porches meet. The plan is square with two wall registers, the upper one carrying two redents to a side and the lower none, and the porches project far enough that the department compares them to Prasat Hin Phimai. The central tower's height is given twice in the same register record, at 21.50 metres in one field and about 15 metres in another, and this page does not choose between them.
The superstructure: four receding tiers of equal height, each with a bancharn opening above a carved false door, naga pak at the corners and sandstone kleep khanun in the Bayon manner, finished with an amaraka finial in the form of a lotus bud in three tiers. The pediments and roofs imitate timber construction, with carved bralee along the ridges.
The door-frame colonettes, which are the signature of the place: each carved with a rishi seated with one knee raised inside a ruean kaeo arch, a form the Tourism Authority names as specific to Bayon-period Khmer colonettes. Above them stand sandstone guardians, a figure of Narai and a five-headed naga.
The unfinished carving. The department notes that the west and east pediments of the central tower preserve clearly Bayon-style work that was left incomplete — สลักไม่สำเร็จ in its own words — which is a more interesting fact about the site than any of the confident ones.
The stucco, as distinct from the stone. The department separates the two carefully and says the stucco has already moved away from Khmer convention: lotus-petal bands, a prachamyam motif simpler than the Khmer original, a swan motif it compares to Phimai but calls much evolved from it, a giant twisted lotus roll in the Lopburi manner, and kruay choeng panels enclosing small kala faces holding sprays of flowers. The five-headed naga in the bancharn stucco it reads as closer to Thai than to Khmer work. Below a certain level the stucco is simply gone, and the department says so.
The lintels are missing. The doorways once carried them and now retain only the carved colonettes framing them.
Three more structures inside the registered ground, which most visitors walk past. East of the towers, the brick vihara King Narai built, 8.10 by 15.0 metres, with laterite paving and arched doors and windows, now ruined to its base and part of its walls. West of the central tower, a brick foundation about 6.5 by 11.0 metres whose form and purpose the department says it cannot determine. And at the north-west corner a brick vihara 7.35 by 15.45 metres with brick piers, holding a badly damaged stone Buddha the department argues was brought there later.
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 08.30–18.00, from the body text of the Tourism Authority of Thailand's own attraction page, read in a rendering browser on 7 September 2026. The structured opening-hours block on the same page carries no times. |
|---|---|
| Admission | Thai nationals: 10 baht. Foreign visitors: 80 baht. |
| Dress | An open state-managed monument, not a working temple, so no ordination-hall etiquette applies. Ordinary courtesy at a Buddhist site is still expected. No official dress notice was found. |
| Photography | No official restriction was found. |
| Getting there | On the mound west of the railway line near San Phra Kan, Tambon Tha Hin, Amphoe Mueang Lopburi. The Tourism Authority lists parking and gives the enquiry number as 0 3641 2510, the Fine Arts Department's fourth regional office at Lopburi. |
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.
Not in the state's own record, and the distinction is worth keeping. It is a Khmer sanctuary that was later adapted for Buddhist use, and the Fine Arts Department's register describes it as a deserted monument on state land in the department's custody, with no resident sangha, no royal monastery grade and no sect. Every instrument that names it — the registration of B.E. 2479, the land-boundary announcement of B.E. 2545, the current fee regulation and the register itself — writes ปรางค์สามยอด without the honorific พระ. The forms Phra Prang Sam Yot and even Wat Phra Prang Sam Yot appear on government pages, but they are not the names in the instruments.
The state does not agree with itself, and this guide does not choose. The Fine Arts Department's register, which is the registering authority, says Mahayana Buddhist of about the eighteenth Buddhist century and reads the three towers as the trikaya. The Lopburi provincial public relations office, Mueang Lopburi municipality and the Prince of Songkla University's Suvarnabhumi institute all say Vajrayana, built under Jayavarman VII for the city of Lavo. None of the four cites a document. The department and the provincial office also place the two flanking deities in opposite towers from each other, so a visitor standing in front of the north tower is being told two different things by two arms of the same state.
That claim comes from one page and nothing supports it. Mueang Lopburi municipality writes that the sanctuary was converted into a Hindu shrine with the bases of Shiva lingam standing in all three towers before King Narai made it Buddhist, and it cites no source for that. The Fine Arts Department's register does not mention a Hindu phase or a lingam anywhere, and the Prince of Songkla University's account says positively that there is none. Because a government domain is not automatically a state record of the thing it describes, the claim is carried here as unverified rather than repeated as history.
Because one of them is out of date. The ministerial regulation on entry fees for registered ancient monuments and national museums, second issue, B.E. 2568, published on 27 May B.E. 2568, sets 10 baht for Thai nationals and 80 baht for other nationalities at Prang Sam Yot, or 30 and 200 baht for a combined ticket with Wat Phra Si Rattana Mahathat, Ban Wichayen and Phra Thinang Krai Son Siharat. It expressly repealed the fee schedule of the B.E. 2551 regulation, whose figures of 50 and 150 baht are still printed by the Tourism Authority and by Lopburi municipality. The gazette is the instrument that governs.
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 Lopburi’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.