The tallest stupa in Thailand and the provincial emblem, rebuilt by King Mongkut over two older chedis and finished under his son — a monument whose nineteenth-century dates are firm and whose origin the state's own sources decline to fix.
วัดพระปฐมเจดีย์ราชวรมหาวิหาร · Wat Phra Pathom Chedi Ratchaworamahawihan
| Official name | วัดพระปฐมเจดีย์ราชวรมหาวิหาร — Wat Phra Pathom Chedi Ratchaworamahawihan |
|---|---|
| Where | Phra Pathom Chedi, Mueang Nakhon Pathom, Nakhon Pathom |
| Royal temple class | First class royal temple, Ratchaworamahawihan (ชั้นเอก ชนิดราชวรมหาวิหาร) Three state sources give the same grade in the same words. The National Office of Buddhism's Nakhon Pathom provincial office writes พระอารามหลวงชั้นเอก ชนิดราชวรมหาวิหาร; the Sangha Region 14 information centre's structured temple record gives ประเภทวัด: พระอารามหลวง ชั้นเอก ราชวรมหาวิหาร; and the Tourism Authority of Thailand's attraction page repeats it. The one wrinkle is that the prose section of the Sangha Region 14 page adds the word พิเศษ — ชั้นเอกพิเศษ, first class special — which its own structured field does not, and which the other two sources do not. This registry follows the register field and the religious administration, and notes the discrepancy rather than adopting it. |
| Monastic order | Maha Nikaya (มหานิกาย), per the Sangha Region 14 temple register |
| Ancient monument | Carried in the national monument register; gazette announcement unread No gazette citation is printed for this monument, and that is deliberate. The Royal Gazette's site refused every request in this run. A search index's extract of a 1977 Fine Arts Department announcement — ประกาศกรมศิลปากร เรื่อง กำหนดเขตที่ดินโบราณสถาน — opens by referring back to an earlier registration of พระปฐมเจดีย์ published in ราชกิจจานุเบกษา เล่ม ๕๒, which is the volume of the great national monument list of B.E. 2478. Nobody in this run opened either document, so the volume is described here and no reference is stated as read. The registration is almost certainly real; the citation is not yet this guide's to give. |
Phra Pathom Chedi, Mueang Nakhon Pathom, Nakhon Pathom
The exact location has not been confirmed yet.
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.
So the honest shape of this temple's chronology is a firm nineteenth century sitting on an undated antiquity. The Sangha Region 14 register's วันตั้งวัด field reads ปี 500, which is the system's placeholder for a missing value and not a claim that the monastery dates from the first century of the common era. It is not treated as a date here.
Phra Pathom Chedi is the largest thing in Nakhon Pathom and the reason the province exists in the national imagination: it is on the provincial seal, it gives the subdistrict its name, and the town is arranged around it. It is also the least straightforward monument in this guide, because what a visitor sees is a nineteenth-century building wrapped around at least two older ones, and the older ones are not dated by anything anybody can read.
The rebuilding is well recorded. King Mongkut had come here as a monk, before his reign, and had seen an old chedi with an overturned-bowl base and a prang rising from it. Once on the throne he ordered a new chedi raised to enclose it entirely, together with the surrounding galleries and the four directional wihan. The tourism authority's record dates the start of that work to B.E. 2396 and its completion, in the following reign, to B.E. 2413 — seventeen years, finished by King Chulalongkorn after his father's death. The result is a Lankan-form bell 120.5 metres to the crown with a base 233 metres in circumference, its structure timber banded with chain and faced in brick, plaster and tile.
The king also gave the monument its name and its most famous argument. He judged that a stupa of that early form might have been raised when Ashoka's missionaries reached Suvarnabhumi, and connected it to the Mahathera Si Sattha of the second Sukhothai inscription, who is said there to have restored a great chedi on his way home from Sri Lanka. It is careful reasoning from real evidence, and it is reasoning: the state pages that repeat it all end the sentence with the Thai for it may be so. Nakhon Pathom Rajabhat University's exhibition on the ancient city goes further and says the construction year cannot be credited at all, and quotes the Fine Arts Department's own edition of the temple chronicle, which admits that whoever built the first chedi is not known.
The twentieth century added the things most visitors actually stop in front of. Under King Vajiravudh, whose reign temple this is, the head, hands and feet of a ruined standing Buddha were brought from Si Satchanalai in Sukhothai and made into a new image for the north wihan; the university's account dates the completed installation to 2 November B.E. 2458 and the conferral of its full name — Phra Ruang Rochanarit Si Inthrathit Thammophat Maha Vajiravudh Ratchapuchaniyabophit — to 26 September B.E. 2466. Behind it, in the wall of that wihan, are interred the ashes of King Vajiravudh himself, of Queen Suvadhana, and of Princess Bejaratana Rajasuda. The museum in the compound began as a collection gathered in the 1890s from across the old Nakhon Chai Si circle, was moved into a wihan in B.E. 2454, became a national museum under the Fine Arts Department in B.E. 2477, and moved into its present building, opened on 30 October B.E. 2514.
The distinction worth carrying away is between an old monument and an old building. The site is genuinely ancient — the objects dug out of it are Dvaravati, and the Dvaravati wheels of the law and white stone Buddhas from here are among the best in the country. The building above them is not. Both facts are true at once, and this page keeps them apart because the sources do.
The chedi itself: a Lankan-form bell 120.5 metres from ground to the tip of the crown, with a base measuring 233 metres around, according to the Tourism Authority of Thailand's record — a timber structure bound with heavy chain, built up in brick and plaster and faced in tile, and enclosing two earlier chedis rather than replacing them.
Phra Ruang Rochanarit in the north wihan: a standing Buddha in the attitude of dispelling fear, made in the reign of King Vajiravudh around a head, hands and feet brought from Si Satchanalai, cast at 12 sok 4 nio in the units the university's account uses. The ashes of King Vajiravudh, Queen Suvadhana and Princess Bejaratana Rajasuda are interred in the wall behind it.
Two of the four Dvaravati white stone Buddhas that survive anywhere, seated in the European manner with the legs down and the hands in the gesture of teaching — one as the principal image of the ordination hall, one on the south terrace. They are several centuries older than everything built around them.
The four wihan on the four sides and the double galleries that ring the base, and on the south gallery a scale model of the original chedi, which is the only way now to see the shape King Mongkut built over.
The Phra Pathom Chedi National Museum on the east side opposite the ordination hall, holding what was dug out of the mound and out of the wider ancient city — wheels of the law in stone, crouching deer, terracotta votive tablets, stone medicine grinders, beads and old currency.
The reclining Buddha and the ordination hall on the lower terrace, and, in the twelfth lunar month, a nine-day fair around the whole monument that is the largest annual event in the province.
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 | The Tourism Authority of Thailand's attraction page, read through a rendering browser, gives Monday to Friday 06.00–19.00 and Saturday and Sunday 06.00–20.00 for veneration at the chedi. The Phra Pathom Chedi National Museum inside the compound keeps different and much shorter hours — the Nakhon Pathom Provincial Administrative Organisation gives Wednesday to Sunday 09.00–16.00 — so a visitor who wants both should come in the morning. |
|---|---|
| Admission | Thai nationals: no rate is published. Foreign visitors: 60 baht. |
| Dress | Not established from an official source. |
| Photography | No source we found states a rule, so we print none. |
| Getting there | 27 Thanon Khwa Phra, Tambon Phra Pathom Chedi, Mueang Nakhon Pathom 73000, in the centre of the town and walkable from Nakhon Pathom railway station. The tourism authority gives the enquiry number of the office that maintains the chedi as 0 3424 2143 and lists parking and restrooms on site. The temple compound covers 156 rai 3 ngan 45 square wa according to the Sangha Region 14 register. |
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 building you see dates from the nineteenth century and the site under it is very much older, and nobody can currently close the gap. The tourism authority dates the present chedi's construction to B.E. 2396 under King Mongkut and its completion to B.E. 2413 under King Chulalongkorn. The original monument it encloses is undated: King Mongkut's attribution to the missionaries of Ashoka is his own reasoning, carried by the state's sources as reasoning, and Nakhon Pathom Rajabhat University's exhibition says plainly that the year of first construction cannot be credited for want of documents and archaeology.
By the figure the Tourism Authority of Thailand publishes, yes: 120.5 metres from the ground to the tip of the crown, with a base 233 metres in circumference. That is the state tourism authority's measurement rather than a survey by the Fine Arts Department, and this guide gives it with that attribution. No official source consulted in this run publishes an independently surveyed dimension set for the monument.
The tourism authority's page gives Monday to Friday 06.00 to 19.00 and Saturday and Sunday 06.00 to 20.00, and publishes an admission figure of 60 baht for foreign visitors. It states no Thai rate, which is not the same as confirming that Thai visitors enter free. The national museum inside the compound is a separate ticket and much shorter hours — Wednesday to Sunday, 09.00 to 16.00, at 20 baht for Thai and 100 baht for foreign visitors according to the provincial administrative organisation.
It is a standing Buddha in the north wihan, made in the reign of King Vajiravudh from the head, hands and feet of a ruined image brought down from Si Satchanalai in Sukhothai and completed with a new body. Nakhon Pathom Rajabhat University's account dates the finished installation to 2 November B.E. 2458 and the conferral of its full name to 26 September B.E. 2466. The ashes of King Vajiravudh, of Queen Suvadhana and of Princess Bejaratana Rajasuda are interred in the wall behind the image, which is why this is counted the reign temple of Rama VI.
It is a royal monastery of the first class of the Ratchaworamahawihan kind — พระอารามหลวงชั้นเอก ชนิดราชวรมหาวิหาร — which is the highest grade in the ladder and puts it in a very short national company. The National Office of Buddhism's Nakhon Pathom provincial office, the Sangha Region 14 register and the tourism authority all give that grade. The Sangha page's prose section adds the word พิเศษ, special, which its own register field does not; this guide follows the register field and flags the difference rather than adopting the higher-sounding form.
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 Nakhon Pathom’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.