The largest Khmer sanctuary in Thailand, standing inside a walled and moated rectangular city 565 by 1,030 metres on the Mun river. It was built for Mahayana Buddhism rather than converted to it, it faces south rather than east, and its central prang was rebuilt stone by stone between 1964 and 1969 in a joint Thai-French anastylosis.
ปราสาทหินพิมาย (เมืองพิมาย) · Prasat Hin Phimai (Mueang Phimai)
| Official name | ปราสาทหินพิมาย (เมืองพิมาย) — Prasat Hin Phimai (Mueang Phimai) |
|---|---|
| Where | Nai Mueang, Phimai, Nakhon Ratchasima |
| 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. 53, part 34, p. 1529, item 40, 27 September B.E. 2479 What the state registered in 1936 was เมืองพิมาย, the city, not the sanctuary standing in it. The ประกาศกรมศิลปากร เรื่อง กำหนดจำนวนโบราณสถานสำหรับชาติ of 27 September B.E. 2479, made under section 6 of the Act on Ancient Monuments, Objects of Art, Antiques and National Museums B.E. 2477, was downloaded from the Fine Arts Department's mirror and read by eye in this run: the Nakhon Ratchasima block runs to at least 45 items and item 40 is เมืองพิมาย อำเภอเมืองพิมาย ตำบลในเมือง. Items 41 to 45 register the western gate arch, the northern gate arch, the laterite pile at the eastern gate, Meru Phrommathat and Meru Noi as separate monuments. ปราสาทหินพิมาย is named nowhere in the block. The department's register agrees with its own instrument: the sanctuary has a register row of its own, 0001213, and that row sits at status 2 — awaiting assessment as an ancient monument — with no gazette instrument attached and no history text, while the city row 0001170 sits at status 1 and carries the 1936 entry. The Fine Arts Department's Phimai Historical Park site recites the same instrument as เล่มที่ ๕๓ ตอนที่ ๓๔ ลงวันที่ ๒๗ กันยายน พ.ศ.๒๔๗๙, which is where the part number used here comes from. No land-boundary order for the city was found on any Phimai register row read in this run. |
| Coordinates | 15.221068, 102.493785 Fine Arts Department register, monument 0001213 |
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.
No founding year for the sanctuary is established by any document read in this run, and the department does not publish one. What is established is an inscribed date of B.E. 1651 for an event at the site, a stylistic sequence, and a chain of dated administrative acts from 1936 onward.
Phimai sits sixty kilometres north-east of Nakhon Ratchasima town, in Tambon Nai Mueang of Amphoe Phimai, and the first thing to understand about it is that the monument is a city, not a building. The Fine Arts Department gives the old city as a rectangle 565 metres wide and 1,030 metres long, walled and moated, with the Mun river running along the north and east, the Lam Khem to the south and the Lam Chakkarat joining the Mun to the west. The historical park the department runs covers about 2,658 rai and takes in the whole of that ground.
The name is the oldest thing on the site that can be read. On the eastern door frame of the southern gallery there is a Khmer inscription naming กมรเตงชคตวิมาย — Kamrateng Jagat Vimaya — and recording an image made in B.E. 1651. The department's reading is that Phimai and Vimaya are the same word, which makes the city's name a survival from the Khmer period rather than a later coinage. That inscription is also the reason a date can be put on anything here at all.
The religion is the point that most popular accounts get backwards. Khmer sanctuaries in Thailand are usually Hindu foundations that were later put to Buddhist use, and readers arrive expecting that story. Phimai is not that. The Fine Arts Department's own park site calls it one of the most important Mahayana Buddhist religious sites in Thailand, without qualification. The Tourism Authority of Thailand says the sanctuary was built as a Mahayana Buddhist religious site and gives the reason plainly: Suryavarman I and Jayavarman VII, the two reigns its building phases are attributed to, both followed Mahayana Buddhism.
It also faces the wrong way, and that turns out to be the most interesting structural fact about it. Khmer prasats face east. Phimai faces south. The Tourism Authority's explanation is that the sanctuary was turned to meet the ancient road running up from Sothorapura, the Khmer capital, which entered Phimai from the south — so that a visitor standing in the southern city gate, the Pratu Chai, looks straight down the axis and sees the prang framed in the opening. That alignment is the argument that Phimai was built facing its capital rather than facing the sunrise.
The modern history is a restoration history and it is precisely dated. The department registered the city in 1936. Between B.E. 2507 and 2512 — 1964 to 1969 — the Fine Arts Department and the government of France jointly rebuilt the central prang by anastylosis: the collapsed stones were catalogued, fitted back together on the ground and returned to their original positions rather than replaced with new work. Restoration of the other monuments inside the city followed, the Phimai Historical Park project was set up, and the park was formally opened on 12 April B.E. 2532 by Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn.
The park is now the fifth most visited site run by the Fine Arts Department, on its own reckoning: not less than 400,000 visitors a year, about a thousand a day. Since 2568 it has also opened at night on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays in some months, with the prasat, Meru Phrommathat and the Pratu Chai lit and the closing time pushed to 21.00. BAANLYY does not represent the park and nothing here is legal or religious advice.
The Naga bridge at the southern entrance, then the outer gopura and outer wall, then the inner gopura and the cloister gallery, in that order — the axis a visitor walks is the axis the builders set toward the south.
The central prang in the middle of the court inside the cloister, built of white sandstone throughout. The Tourism Authority notes that this is what distinguishes it from the gopura, which are not.
Prang Brahmadat, in front of the central prang and slightly to the left, built of laterite in the reign of Jayavarman VII. It held the sandstone portrait sculpture read as a likeness of Jayavarman VII; the original is in the Phimai National Museum and the figure in the tower is a copy.
Prang Hin Daeng, on the right, with a lintel above the northern doorway carved with a scene from the Mahabharata — Karna hunting the wild boar.
The outer western court, walled again, with a pair of bannalai standing side by side and a pond at each of the four corners.
The city wall and its four gates. The Tourism Authority attributes them to the reign of Jayavarman VII and singles out the southern Pratu Chai as the most important, because it takes the ancient road from Angkor: stand in the gate opening and the prasat lines up exactly in the frame.
Kuti Rishi, outside the wall to the south — a small laterite building on a square plan, identified as an arogayasala, one of the hospital chapels named in the Preah Khan inscription, at about the eighteenth Buddhist century.
Meru Phrommathat and Meru Noi, north-east of the city in Tambon Pratu Chai, and the laterite pile at the eastern gate: all three were registered as monuments in their own right in the same 1936 instrument as the city.
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 07.30–17.30 with no closing day, per the Fine Arts Department's own Phimai Historical Park account, in a post dated 2 September 2026 read firsthand for this page. Neither finearts.go.th nor the Tourism Authority publishes opening hours for the park: the Authority's page carries only a live open-or-closed widget with no times in it. |
|---|---|
| Admission | Thai nationals: 20 baht. Foreign visitors: 200 baht. |
| Dress | An archaeological site rather than a working monastery, so no ordination-hall dress rule applies, but it is a religious monument and the masonry is not for climbing. |
| Photography | No source we found states a rule, so we print none. |
| Getting there | Tambon Nai Mueang, Amphoe Phimai, about 60 kilometres north-east of Nakhon Ratchasima town. The park office is on 0 4447 1568 and hp_pimai@finearts.go.th. Car park and toilets on site; the department runs an information centre with leaflets, an exhibition and a video room. |
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. This is the most common error made about it, and the state is unusually clear. The Fine Arts Department's own site for Phimai Historical Park calls the sanctuary one of the most important Mahayana Buddhist religious sites in Thailand, without qualification. The Tourism Authority of Thailand says it was built as a Mahayana Buddhist religious site and gives the reason: Suryavarman I and Jayavarman VII, the two reigns the building phases are attributed to, both followed Mahayana Buddhism. Phimai was not a Hindu foundation later put to Buddhist use — which is exactly what Prasat Hin Phanom Wan, thirty kilometres away in the same province, was.
Because of the road. The Tourism Authority of Thailand's explanation is that the sanctuary was turned to meet the ancient route running up from Sothorapura, the Khmer capital, which entered the city from the south. The southern city gate, the Pratu Chai, is the gate that road arrives at, and it is aligned so that a visitor standing in the opening sees the prasat framed exactly in it. So the orientation is an argument about where Phimai was looking, and the answer is towards Angkor rather than towards the sunrise.
No founding year is established and no state source publishes one. What is dated is an event: the Khmer inscription on the eastern door frame of the southern gallery names Kamrateng Jagat Vimaya and records an image made in B.E. 1651. The Fine Arts Department calls the sanctuary about a thousand years old. The Tourism Authority places the start of construction in the late sixteenth Buddhist century in the reign of Suryavarman I, in Baphuon style, with a further phase in the early eighteenth Buddhist century under Jayavarman VII. Those are two different kinds of statement and this page keeps them apart.
Twenty baht for Thai nationals and two hundred for other nationalities, on a single ticket, which is what the current statutory schedule sets: the annex to the ministerial regulation on admission fees, second issue, B.E. 2568, published in the Royal Gazette on 27 May 2568 and in force from 28 May. The park's own account states opening hours of 07.30 to 17.30 daily with no closing day, and adds that children, students, the elderly and monks enter free. Figures of 10 and 40 baht still appear on some government tourism pages and are the pre-2568 rate.
Yes, and the Fine Arts Department describes the method by name. Between B.E. 2507 and 2512 — 1964 to 1969 — the department and the government of France jointly restored the central prang by anastylosis, which means the fallen stones were catalogued, fitted back together according to the evidence of the stones themselves, and returned to their original positions rather than replaced with new material. Restoration of the other monuments inside the city followed, and the historical park was formally opened on 12 April B.E. 2532 by Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn.
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 Ratchasima’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.