The second-class royal monastery on the river south of Nonthaburi town, rebuilt by a queen and then by her son as her memorial, with a thirty-metre chedi you can walk inside and a royal residence that has been moved four times.
วัดเขมาภิรตารามราชวรวิหาร · Wat Khema Phirataram Ratchaworawihan
| Official name | วัดเขมาภิรตารามราชวรวิหาร — Wat Khema Phirataram Ratchaworawihan |
|---|---|
| Where | Suan Yai, Mueang Nonthaburi, Nonthaburi |
| Royal temple class | Second class royal temple, Ratchaworawihan (พระอารามหลวงชั้นโท ราชวรวิหาร) The Nonthaburi provincial office of the National Office of Buddhism states it in those words — วัดเขมาภิรตาราม เป็นพระอารามหลวงชั้นโท ชนิดราชวรวิหาร — and Nonthaburi City Municipality prints the same grade independently. |
| Monastic order | Thammayut (ธรรมยุต) |
| Ancient monument | Registered national ancient monument ประกาศกรมศิลปากร กำหนดจำนวนโบราณสถานสำหรับชาติ ราชกิจจานุเบกษา เล่ม ๕๒ หน้า ๓๖๗๙ ลงวันที่ ๘ มีนาคม ๒๔๗๘ — รายการจังหวัดนนทบุรีอยู่ที่หน้า ๓๖๘๘ Read from the scan the Fine Arts Department serves from its own file store: under the heading ๑๖. จังหวัดนนทบุรี the first entry is ๑. วัดเขมาภิรตาราม, immediately above Wat Poramaiyikawat. The departmental register number for the monastery could not be read, so it is left null rather than guessed. Two of its buildings — the Red Residence and Phra Thinang Mun Monthien, both royal buildings moved here from Bangkok — are separately recorded against the same announcement by the Ministry of Culture's cultural-information database. |
| Coordinates | 13.821638, 100.503270 Department of Tourism, Thailand Tourism Directory record 3478, whose own record places it in Suan Yai, Mueang Nonthaburi |
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 department's preferred reading of the name is not historical at all but linguistic: Pali khema, meaning peace and freedom from care. A folk story about a cargo ship, attached to a corrupted form of the name, is dismissed in the same monograph as a tale invented to fit the corruption.
Wat Khema Phirataram has the most candid documentation of any monument in this province, and what it documents is an absence. In 1962 the Fine Arts Department published a monograph on the monastery, and the compiler set out the evidence problem on the first pages: no document about the place can be found earlier than the Fourth Reign; there is no inscription and no ancient object to help, because the buildings have been repaired and altered many times over; nothing standing there is older than about a century and a half; and so the question of who raised it, and when, cannot be settled. The popular claim that this is an early Ayutthaya foundation is traced in the same volume to its actual source — a proclamation of Rama IV recording that people came and told his mother the monastery dated from King U Thong's time, and that the elders had always said so.
The verifiable history is nineteenth-century and it is a family story. In the Second Reign the chief consort, later known as Queen Sri Suriyendra, paid for a rebuild: the foundations were dug out afresh, the walls widened, the floor raised, and — the detail that matters most — a new principal image was cast over and enclosing the old one, which is still inside it and has never been examined. A wall went up with four chedis at its corners and a timber preaching hall was built. The king and the Front Palace prince attended both the laying of the foundations and the raising of the roof timbers, and the celebration fell in the year Chula Sakarat 1190.
Her son finished the work as her memorial. Rama IV had wanted to restore the monastery during his predecessor's reign and had not had the means; after his coronation he gave several hundred chang to the restoration of this monastery and of Wat Chaiyaphruek, and granted both the names they carry today — the compound name Khema Phirataram is no older than that. The foundations of the great chedi were laid on 26 October B.E. 2397, and on 6 October B.E. 2402 the four chedis his mother had built were moved to stand at its corners. The department records that the king framed the whole undertaking, consistently, as a memorial to her.
Two buildings here did not begin as temple buildings at all. The Red Residence is a timber house that Rama I built in the Grand Palace for his elder sister, paired with a Green Residence for the other; the queen who rebuilt this monastery lived in it as a girl; it was moved to the old palace for her in the Third Reign, moved again to Wat Molilok as a monastic dwelling after her death, and moved a fourth time by Rama IV to stand here as the abbot's quarters, in her memory. The Fine Arts Department is careful to say it is not the Red Residence in the National Museum, which is a different building and is constantly confused with it. A second relocated royal building, Phra Thinang Mun Monthien, came here in the Fifth Reign.
The great chedi, fifteen wa high — thirty metres, which the municipality confirms independently — modelled on the chedi at Wat Si Ayothaya in Ayutthaya, hollow inside, with seven openings at the base you can walk through, and four smaller chedis at its corners that are Queen Sri Suriyendra's originals, moved into position on 6 October B.E. 2402.
The principal image, a Maravijaya Buddha two and a half metres across the lap and four metres high — cast in the Second Reign over and around an older image that is still inside it and cannot be taken out to be looked at.
Eighty figures of the great disciples, ranged in front of the principal image: Rama IV had them made because the hall was too empty, and their base takes up roughly half the floor.
Phra In Plaeng, a metal Buddha brought here from the Chan Kasem Palace at Ayutthaya and set on a Chinese-manner base, with a reclining Buddha in a niche cut into the wall behind and two large crowned standing Buddhas behind the principal image.
The ordination hall's painting, which the Fine Arts Department describes as three idioms at once and characteristic of the Fourth Reign: Thai devata figures, Chinese plant-pots, and Western flower sprays on the door panels, on a blue ground.
An orientation problem made visible: the monastery faces the river, so the principal image faces west against convention, and a further Buddha was installed at the back facing east to correct it.
The Red Residence — timber, four times relocated, now the abbot's quarters — and Phra Thinang Mun Monthien, a single-storey twin-roofed timber building of Second Reign date moved here in the Fifth Reign. Both are separately recorded as ancient monuments by the Ministry of Culture.
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 settled. The Department of Tourism publishes 06:00–18:00 daily and Nonthaburi City Municipality publishes 08:00–20:00 daily; both are state sources and neither can be reconciled against the other, so this guide gives both rather than choosing. |
|---|---|
| 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 | On the east bank of the Chao Phraya about two kilometres south of Nonthaburi town centre, with its frontage directly on the river and Phibun Songkhram Road along its eastern boundary. |
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.
Nobody can show that it is. The Fine Arts Department's own monograph says no document about the place exists earlier than the Fourth Reign, that there is no inscription or ancient object to test the claim, and that nothing standing there is older than about a century and a half. The early Ayutthaya story is traced in the same volume to hearsay reported to a queen in the nineteenth century.
An older image. The Second Reign rebuild cast a new Buddha over and around the one that was already there, and the Fine Arts Department notes that the earlier image cannot be taken out to be looked at. Whatever the monastery's real age, the one object that might test it is sealed inside the object everyone comes to see.
Yes. The Fine Arts Department records that it is hollow, with seven openings at the base that can be walked through, and hollow up the core. It stands fifteen wa high, which Nonthaburi City Municipality gives as thirty metres.
Because the monastery faces the river, and the river is to the west. The Fine Arts Department notes the anomaly and records that a further Buddha was installed at the rear facing east to correct it.
That is not settled. The Department of Tourism publishes 06:00 to 18:00 daily; Nonthaburi City Municipality publishes 08:00 to 20:00 daily. Both are state sources, neither explains the other, and this guide will not pick between them without a third.
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 Nonthaburi’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.