The most important stupa in the Thai northeast and the one every other stupa in this province is a copy of. It stands 53 kilometres south of Nakhon Phanom town, it holds what Buddhists of the Mekong basin hold to be the Buddha's breastbone relic, and it fell down completely in a rainstorm on the evening of 11 August 1975. What stands today was built in its place and finished four years later.
วัดพระธาตุพนมวรมหาวิหาร · Wat Phra That Phanom Woramahawihan
| Official name | วัดพระธาตุพนมวรมหาวิหาร — Wat Phra That Phanom Woramahawihan |
|---|---|
| Where | That Phanom, That Phanom, Nakhon Phanom |
| Royal temple class | First class royal temple, Woramahawihan (พระอารามหลวงชั้นเอก ชนิดวรมหาวิหาร) The That Phanom subdistrict municipality — เทศบาลตำบลธาตุพนม, the local government authority for the town the temple stands in — states on its own page for the temple that in B.E. 2485 it was raised to พระอารามหลวงชั้นเอกชนิดวรมหาวิหาร. The temple's official name, วัดพระธาตุพนมวรมหาวิหาร, carries the sub-rank in it. This attribution is weaker than the ones elsewhere in this guide and the page says so: the National Office of Buddhism, which is the register of royal grades, publishes no royal-monastery list for Nakhon Phanom — its provincial office's important-temples section is still the unfilled template — and its national temple registry refused every request made in this run. |
| Monastic order | Not recorded in any register we could read. |
| Ancient monument | Registered national ancient monument Royal Gazette vol. 52, p. 3687, 8 March B.E. 2478 Two instruments, both downloaded from the Fine Arts Department's mirror and read as text in this run. The first is the ประกาศกรมศิลปากร เรื่อง การกำหนดจำนวนโบราณสถานสำหรับชาติ of 8 March B.E. 2478, the national list made under the Ancient Monuments Act B.E. 2477. Its Nakhon Phanom block runs to five items and this temple is item 1, written พระธาตุพนม อำเภอธาตุพนม ตำบลธาตุพนม; items 2 and 3 are วัดกลางเมืองไชยบุรี and วัดใต้เมืองไชยบุรี in อำเภอท่าอุเทน, both of which the department still carries under their own register ids, which is what confirms the block is this province's. The section number printed beside the province name was not legible in two optical passes and is deliberately not given here: the reading it produced cannot be reconciled with the section number this guide recorded for Phetchaburi from the same issue, and a number that fails its own cross-check is worse than an absent one. The second instrument is the ประกาศกรมศิลปากร เรื่อง กำหนดเขตที่ดินโบราณสถาน at vol. 96 part 160 of 18 September B.E. 2522, which fixes the monument land at 17 rai 3 ngan 56 square wa. It opens by reciting that the department had registered this temple in the announcement of 8 March B.E. 2478 หากแต่มิได้กำหนดเขตที่ดินโบราณสถาน — but without fixing a land boundary — which is the gap it closes forty-three years later. It was signed in August B.E. 2522, months after the rebuilt stupa was finished, and it writes the district as อำเภอพระธาตุพนม where the modern register writes ธาตุพนม. |
| Coordinates | 16.942664, 104.724142 Fine Arts Department register, monument 0003501 (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.
The gap between the two halves above is the whole point of this entry, and the UNESCO submission is unusually candid about it: it records that the scientific dating differed from the chronicle's account and adds that this was not a relevant issue to the worshippers. Nothing read in this run reconciles the department's structured age field with the department's own prose, and neither is presented here as settling the other.
Wat Phra That Phanom sits on Chayangkun Road in the town of That Phanom, facing east toward the Mekong and, across it, Laos. It is the reason the province is on anyone's map, and the reason six other stupas in Nakhon Phanom look the way they do: every one of the others in this guide is described by the state's own record as a copy of this one. Its standing in the Mekong basin is not confined to Thailand. Pilgrims come from both banks, and the annual homage in the third lunar month brings people to That Phanom in numbers the town is otherwise never asked to hold.
What the record establishes about its beginning is less than most accounts suggest, and the Fine Arts Department says so itself. Its register states that no documentary evidence of the temple's construction survives. What survives instead is the Urangkhathat chronicle, which holds that Phra Maha Kassapa and five hundred arahants built it about eight years after the Buddha's death and enshrined the breastbone relic within. The department prints that as chronicle and this page keeps it there. Alongside it the same register carries a structured age of the thirteenth to fifteenth Buddhist centuries and, a field away, a written description that supposes the twelfth to fourteenth; the Tourism Authority gives B.E. 1200 to 1400 on the strength of excavation; and Thailand's UNESCO submission reports scientific dating of the innermost brick chamber at ground level. Four dates from three agencies, none of them the chronicle's, and none of them quite each other's.
The event this temple is now defined by is dated to the minute. At 19.38 on 11 August 1975, after days of heavy rain and wind on a base that had been visibly cracking, the whole stupa came down. The Tourism Authority and the municipality both record the hour. Thailand's UNESCO submission describes it as a high, top-heavy stupa seated on an ancient crumbling brick base that collapsed during a week-long rainstorm, and records that the restoration was conducted under the supervision of the Prime Minister. The department's register puts its own last restoration of the monument at B.E. 2518 to 2522 — that is, the rebuild itself.
The two state bodies closest to the site disagree about the day it was finished. The Tourism Authority of Thailand gives 29 March B.E. 2522; the That Phanom subdistrict municipality gives 23 March B.E. 2522. Both are printed here and neither is averaged away. What is not in dispute is that the stupa standing today is a reconstruction in reinforced concrete, hollow, with tie beams, raised over the ground the old one stood on — and that four months after it was completed the Fine Arts Department finally fixed the monument's land boundary in the Royal Gazette, forty-three years after registering the temple without one.
It remains a working royal monastery and a place of pilgrimage rather than an attraction, and it should be approached as one. Thailand has had the property on its UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List since 2017; it is not inscribed, and this guide does not call it World Heritage. BAANLYY does not represent the temple and nothing here is religious or legal advice.
The stupa itself, described by the Fine Arts Department register as a square mondop-form chedi of two superimposed tiers with a tapering lotus-square summit on all four sides, 16 metres to a side at the base, built in reinforced concrete, hollow inside and held by tie beams. The lower tier has one real doorway, on the east, and three false ones.
The red brick facing on all four walls of the lower tier, carved with human figures, animals, coiled kanok scrollwork and fern-leaf motifs. This is the surviving decorative language of the old stupa, carried on to the new one.
The four arched doorways in the ฝักเพกา form at the middle of each face, each with a stucco Rahu swallowing the moon above it, and below them model door leaves carved with the Buddha in a series of attitudes.
Above the second tier, the pattama base — บัวคว่ำบัวหงายลูกแก้วอกไก่ — decorated with flowers and carrying a tall, slender square-lotus bell that the register likens to the mouth of a glass bottle, dressed with tiered floral finials to the summit.
The gold chatra at the top. The Tourism Authority gives the finial's weight as 110 kilograms of gold, set with gemstones.
The rest of the compound as the register lists it: the ordination hall, the Ho Phra Kaeo, the cloister and the Sa Muratha Phisek pond, with the whole temple laid out facing east toward the Mekong.
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 | A working royal monastery and an active pilgrimage site. Shoulders and knees covered, shoes off before entering the ordination hall and the inner terrace. |
| Photography | No source we found states a rule, so we print none. |
| Getting there | 183 Moo 13, Chayangkun Road, Tambon That Phanom, Amphoe That Phanom. The Tourism Authority gives it as about 53 kilometres from Nakhon Phanom town on Highway 212, with air-conditioned and ordinary buses from the town's bus station. Parking and toilets on site, including accessible toilets. |
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 source will give you one answer, and the disagreement is between arms of the same state. The Fine Arts Department's register carries the site at the thirteenth to fifteenth Buddhist centuries in its structured age field while the department's own written description of the monument supposes the twelfth to fourteenth. The Tourism Authority of Thailand says archaeological excavation dated it to between B.E. 1200 and 1400. Thailand's UNESCO tentative-list submission reports that scientific testing dated the innermost brick chamber at ground level, printing that date in a form its own text leaves ambiguous. Separately from all of these, the Urangkhathat chronicle holds that it was raised about eight years after the Buddha's death, and the department is explicit that this is chronicle rather than evidence.
No. The whole stupa collapsed at 19.38 on 11 August 1975 after days of heavy rain and wind, on a base that had been cracking. What stands now was built in its place to the old design and finished in B.E. 2522 — the Tourism Authority gives the day as 29 March and the That Phanom municipality gives it as 23 March. The Fine Arts Department's register describes the present structure as reinforced concrete, hollow, with tie beams, 16 metres to a side at the base, and records its own last restoration of the monument as the campaign of B.E. 2518 to 2522.
Not yet, and the distinction matters. "Phra That Phanom, its related historic buildings and associated landscape" has been on Thailand's UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List since it was submitted on 2 February 2017, under reference 6183 and criteria (i), (ii) and (vi). A tentative list is a state's own inventory of properties it may nominate in future; it confers no World Heritage status. Thailand currently has nine inscribed properties and this is not one of them, so nothing on this page calls it World Heritage.
The That Phanom subdistrict municipality states that the temple was raised in B.E. 2485 to พระอารามหลวงชั้นเอก ชนิดวรมหาวิหาร — a royal monastery of the first class, Woramahawihan — and the temple's official name carries that sub-rank in it. That attribution is thinner than this guide would like. The National Office of Buddhism is the body that holds the register of royal grades, and in this run its national temple registry refused every request while its Nakhon Phanom provincial office turned out to publish no royal-monastery list at all, its important-temples section still carrying the template's sample rows.
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 Phanom’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.