A third-class royal monastery in the middle of the ancient city of Nakhon Pathom, built around a Dvaravati brick stupa that collapsed into a mound and carries a late-Ayutthaya prang on top of it — two monuments in one, a thousand years apart.
วัดพระประโทณเจดีย์วรวิหาร · Wat Phra Prathon Chedi Worawihan
| Official name | วัดพระประโทณเจดีย์วรวิหาร — Wat Phra Prathon Chedi Worawihan |
|---|---|
| Where | Phra Prathon, Mueang Nakhon Pathom, Nakhon Pathom |
| Royal temple class | Third class royal temple, Worawihan (ชั้นตรี วรวิหาร) The Sangha Region 14 information centre's temple register gives ประเภทวัด: พระอารามหลวง ชั้นตรี วรวิหาร for temple code 2730103001. This is one of only two temples at that grade in the whole of Sangha Region 14, which covers four provinces — the register's own summary table counts two. No source consulted in this run gives the date on which the temple was raised to royal rank, so this page does not state one. |
| Monastic order | Maha Nikaya (มหานิกาย), per the Sangha Region 14 temple register |
| Ancient monument | Carried in the national monument register; gazette announcement unread Phra Prathon Chedi is carried in the national monument register and the registration is not in doubt; the citation is. Nakhon Pathom Rajabhat University's exhibition on the ancient city states that the Fine Arts Department registered it in ราชกิจจานุเบกษา เล่ม 52 ตอนที่ 25 and gives no date, and a second Rajabhat-built cultural mapping system repeats the same part number, also undated. But the great national monument list that registered the other Nakhon Pathom monuments — Wat Phra Ngam among them, on the Fine Arts Department's own testimony — is เล่ม 52 ตอนที่ 75 of 8 March B.E. 2478. Two university sources against a documented pattern is not a resolution, the gazette site refused every request in this run, and averaging or guessing between them would be exactly the error this guide exists to avoid. So the registration is recorded and the reference is left unstated. |
Phra Prathon, 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.
The gap between the two halves is the point. The monastery is a late-eighteenth-century foundation with a register entry; the mound it sits around is roughly a thousand years older and is dated by brickwork rather than by any document. A page that gave a single founding year for Wat Phra Prathon Chedi would be wrong whichever year it chose.
Two kilometres east of Phra Pathom Chedi along Phetkasem Road, and far less visited, is the monument that was actually at the centre of the ancient city. Phra Prathon Chedi stands almost in the middle of the old walled town of Nakhon Pathom, which is why the ground around it has produced so much: the tourism authority's record lists Buddha images, stucco Buddha heads, terracotta votive plaques and a bronze garuda trampling a naga among the finds, and notes that King Vajiravudh took that garuda as his personal official emblem.
What survives above ground is not one building but two, stacked. The original was a Dvaravati stupa of the overturned-bowl form, built of brick; it collapsed, and the collapse left the large mound that gives the site its shape today. In the Ayutthaya period a prang was raised directly on the old stupa's brick base, and the university's account records a further repair in the reign of King Mongkut that is thought to have added about a metre to the top. When the Fine Arts Department's Regional Office 2 at Suphanburi excavated — first in B.E. 2545, then across three seasons from B.E. 2548 — it confirmed that the mound under the prang is a square-plan Dvaravati brick structure, and that the two belong to different worlds.
The finds from those seasons were modest and the university says so plainly: not much, in its own words. Dvaravati stucco Buddha faces, stucco figures of people, and from the ground further north two Dvaravati silver coins, a stone crouching deer and Dvaravati brick. The material went to the Phra Pathom Chedi National Museum, which is where most of the ancient city's excavated record now lives. The dating rests on the brickwork and on comparison with other Dvaravati stupas rather than on radiocarbon: the Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre's art database gives a range across the twelfth to sixteenth Buddhist centuries, and notes that this chedi appears in an Ayutthaya-period Traiphum manuscript painting, which makes it one of the very few Thai monuments with a pre-modern picture of itself.
The name is where the record stops and tradition takes over, and the tradition is a good one. Nakhon Pathom Rajabhat University files it under literature: a clan of Brahmins called the Thona brahmins is held to have settled here carrying a golden measuring vessel, a thanan, of the kind the elder Dona used to divide the Buddha's relics after the cremation. In the chronicle the vessel is seized by the founder of Nakhon Chai Si and sent to Lanka in exchange for a relic, and a later king of Lavo builds a chedi over the stone chamber that had held it and names it after the vessel. The university sets that account beside its archaeology without merging them, and says that the department cannot determine by scientific means who built any of these monuments. This page keeps the same distance.
The monastery around the mound is a separate and much younger thing, and the Sangha's register dates it: constituted in B.E. 2324, granted its wisungkhamsima in B.E. 2327, and now a royal monastery of the third class of the Worawihan kind, one of only two at that grade in the four provinces of Sangha Region 14. It occupies 120 rai 3 ngan 12 square wa on Phetkasem Road, and it is a working temple rather than an archaeological park — which is part of why the ruin at its centre is so much less photographed than the great chedi down the road.
The mound itself: roughly 50 metres high with a square base about 60 metres to a side, according to figures the Nakhon Pathom Provincial Administrative Organisation and Nakhon Pathom Rajabhat University both carry — a collapsed Dvaravati brick stupa rather than a hill, and one of the largest such structures left standing anywhere in the country.
The prang on top of it, in late-Ayutthaya form, built directly onto the older stupa's brick base rather than replacing it, with a further addition to the summit attributed to the reign of King Mongkut.
The exposed Dvaravati brickwork revealed by the Fine Arts Department's excavation seasons of B.E. 2545 and B.E. 2548–2550, which is what allows the two building periods to be told apart at all.
The temple grounds on Phetkasem Road, two kilometres east of Phra Pathom Chedi and inside what was the walled circuit of the ancient city, which is why the surrounding ground has produced so many Dvaravati finds.
What is not here: the finds themselves. The stucco Buddha faces, the silver coins, the crouching deer and the bronze garuda trampling a naga that King Vajiravudh adopted as his personal emblem are in the Phra Pathom Chedi National Museum and the National Museum in Bangkok, not at the site.
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 | Not established from an official source. |
|---|---|
| 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 | 78 Phetkasem Road, Tambon Phra Prathon, Mueang Nakhon Pathom 73000 — about two kilometres east of Phra Pathom Chedi along Phetkasem Road, which makes the two an easy pair in one morning. The tourism authority gives enquiry numbers of 0 3421 2011, 0 3421 2313 and 0 3424 2440 and lists parking on site. The temple grounds cover 120 rai 3 ngan 12 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.
No, and the two are constantly run together. Phra Prathon Chedi is the large mound inside Wat Phra Prathon Chedi Worawihan in Tambon Phra Prathon. Chula Prathon Chedi is a separate ruin with its own registration — Nakhon Pathom Rajabhat University's exhibition cites it as gazetted in volume 57, part 40, of 22 October B.E. 2483, which is not this monument's citation. A source about one is not a source about the other, and this guide keeps their registrations apart for that reason.
The stupa under the mound is Dvaravati, which the Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre's art database places across the twelfth to sixteenth Buddhist centuries on the evidence of its brick-and-plaster technique and comparison with other Dvaravati stupas. That is stylistic dating rather than an absolute date, and no radiocarbon result for this monument was found in this run. The prang standing on top of it is a much later addition, in late-Ayutthaya form, with a further repair attributed to the reign of King Mongkut.
The name comes from a chronicle account rather than from a document, and the university source that carries it files it under literature and legend rather than archaeology. The tradition holds that a clan of Brahmins settled here with a golden measuring vessel of the kind the elder Dona used to divide the Buddha's relics, and that a later king built a chedi over the stone chamber holding it and named the chedi after the vessel. This guide tells the story as tradition, which is how the source that carries it presents it.
No official source consulted states either. The Tourism Authority of Thailand's page for the monument carries a description of it but publishes no opening hours and no admission figure, and the Nakhon Pathom Provincial Administrative Organisation's page says explicitly that no opening-hours or admission information was found. Rather than copy a time from a travel site, this guide leaves both blank. It is a working monastery two kilometres from Phra Pathom Chedi, and in practice the grounds are open in daylight hours.
It is a royal monastery of the third class of the Worawihan kind — พระอารามหลวง ชั้นตรี วรวิหาร — according to the Sangha Region 14 information centre's register. That is a meaningful distinction locally: the register's own summary counts only two temples at that grade across the four provinces of the region. No source consulted gives the date on which the temple was raised to royal rank, so this guide states the grade and leaves the date open.
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.