The Dvaravati twin-town on the Pa Sak that UNESCO inscribed in 2023 — about 2,551 rai inside two sets of moated walls, with roughly 144 monuments counted in and around them and not one of them a working temple.
เมืองศรีเทพ · Mueang Si Thep
| Official name | เมืองศรีเทพ — Mueang Si Thep |
|---|---|
| Where | Si Thep (ศรีเทพ), Si Thep (ศรีเทพ), Phetchabun |
| 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. 80, part 29, 26 March B.E. 2506 — ประกาศกรมศิลปากร เรื่อง ขึ้นทะเบียนโบราณสถาน, item 1, registering เมืองศรีเทพ อำเภอวิเชียรบุรี จังหวัดเพชรบูรณ์ together with its land at about 2,551 ไร่ 2 งาน. The city is also item 1 of the earlier national list at vol. 52, p. 3693, 8 March B.E. 2478, where it is recorded as เมืองศรีเทพหรือไพศาลี อำเภอวิเชียร ตำบลนาตะกรุด. Both instruments were read from the department's own scans rather than cited. The 1963 announcement gives the district as วิเชียรบุรี and the 1935 list as วิเชียร; the live register says อำเภอศรีเทพ, a district created out of Wichian Buri afterwards, so the three documents describe one place under two administrative names. The 1935 entry is a departmental list published in the Gazette rather than a registration under section 7 of the Ancient Monuments Act, which is a different legal act; the 1963 announcement is the registration, and it is the one cited as such here. |
| World Heritage | The Ancient Town of Si Thep and its Associated Dvaravati Monuments (1662) |
| Coordinates | 15.466430, 101.145508 Fine Arts Department national ancient monument register, monument 0004682 เมืองศรีเทพ, ตำบลศรีเทพ อำเภอศรีเทพ จังหวัดเพชรบูรณ์ |
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 inscription found at Si Thep names the city or a ruler of it, so there is no foundation date here in the sense that Sukhothai or Lopburi has one. What there is instead is a long sequence of dated fabric, and the page prints that sequence rather than reducing it to a year.
Si Thep is a city with two shapes. The inner town is almost circular, about 1.5 kilometres across, ringed by a moat and an earth bank with six gateways; the Fine Arts Department counts about forty monuments inside it on ground that rolls gently and holds water in ponds and hollows all over. Attached to its eastern side is the outer town, a flat rectangle with six gateways of its own and about fifty-four more monuments. Outside both, the department counts about fifty more. That is roughly a hundred and forty-four monuments in one place, which is why the guide gives the city a page and treats three of its structures inside that page rather than as separate records.
The centre of the inner town is Khao Khlang Nai, and it is the most unusual thing here. The department describes it as a Buddhist foundation built with the first phase of the city, Theravada at first and adapted to Mahayana use in about the fourteenth Buddhist century, whose upper structure has gone entirely and left a very large laterite platform faced with stucco, rectangular like a vihara but solid inside, with a stair on the east climbing to the terrace above. What survives is on the lower part of the south and west faces: stucco dwarfs with human and animal heads, alternating with animals in the posture of bearing the building's weight, in the Dvaravati manner found at Khu Bua in Ratchaburi. The department states that this is the only Dvaravati monument in Thailand where that stucco survives in place on the base.
Beside it stand two Khmer-culture prangs, both facing west, which is unusual in itself. Prang Si Thep is brick on a large laterite platform with two small buildings in front that the department reads as libraries; it was raised as a Shaiva temple and an attempt was made in the reign of Jayavarman VII to convert it to Mahayana Buddhist use, which was never finished. Prang Song Phi Nong, the pair, kept the better of the two lintels — a sandstone Umamahesvara showing Shiva holding Parvati and seated on the bull Nandi. In front of it, on the cruciform walkway, the department recorded the find of a sandstone image of the sun god Surya, the sixth from this city. The other five are scattered: three in the National Museum Bangkok, one in the Norton Simon Museum in the United States, one in the Somdet Phra Narai National Museum in Lopburi. Six Surya images from one site is a concentration found nowhere else in Thailand, and the department connects it to a solar cult with rites of its own.
The state's interest in the place is old. It is item 1 of section 23 of the first national list of ancient monuments, published in the Royal Gazette in March 1935, where it appears under a district that no longer exists and a second name, Phaisali, that nobody uses now. In March 1963 the department registered it properly, with a land boundary of about 2,551 rai 2 ngan, in the same announcement that registered Khao Klang Nok and the outer prang. The historical park followed, and in September 2023 UNESCO inscribed the city with Khao Klang Nok and the Khao Thamorrat cave as a single serial property under criteria (ii) and (iii).
Khao Khlang Nai at the centre of the inner town: a very large solid laterite platform, once faced in stucco, with an east stair to the terrace. On the lower south and west faces, stucco dwarfs with human and animal heads alternating with load-bearing animals — the only Dvaravati stucco of its kind still on the base of the monument it was made for.
Prang Si Thep, brick on a big laterite platform, facing west, with two small buildings in front that the Fine Arts Department reads as scripture libraries. Excavation under those libraries in B.E. 2544–2545 reached a building and a pond older than the prang above them.
Prang Song Phi Nong, two brick prangs on one laterite base, also facing west. The smaller one still carries its sandstone lintel: Shiva holding Parvati, the two of them seated on the bull Nandi.
The two circuits of moat and earth bank themselves, each with six gateways, separately registered as กำแพงเมืองในเมืองศรีเทพ and กำแพงเมืองนอกเมืองศรีเทพ under monument numbers 0004802 and 0004803.
The excavation shelter over the burials found in B.E. 2531 — human skeletons with their grave goods, and an elephant skeleton at the same level as the lowest monument footing, which is the evidence for settlement here more than two thousand years ago.
The Chao Pho Si Thep shrine just inside the western gate, two Thai timber buildings, where the town's guardian is kept. The image in it is a replacement carved locally after the original, itself a sculpture taken from the ruins, was stolen in about B.E. 2514–2515.
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, 08.30–16.30 |
|---|---|
| Admission | Not established from an official source. |
| Dress | An archaeological site rather than a working monastery, so ordinary walking clothes are right. There is very little shade between the monuments and the ground is open. |
| Photography | No source we found states a rule, so we print none. |
| Getting there | Highway 21 from Bangkok towards Phetchabun, about 240 kilometres, then right onto highway 2211 in front of the Si Thep district office and about 9 kilometres further. By bus, services from Bangkok's Mo Chit 2 terminal run up and down all day; get off at the Si Thep district market at Ban Klang and take local transport in. The park runs its own shuttle between the monuments inside the walls. |
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. It is the remains of a Dvaravati city with about a hundred and forty monuments in and around it, Buddhist and Hindu by turns, abandoned centuries ago and never reoccupied. There are no monks here and no working monastery inside the walls.
In 2023. UNESCO inscribed it as property 1662, The Ancient Town of Si Thep and its Associated Dvaravati Monuments, under criteria (ii) and (iii), as one serial property with three parts: the city, Khao Klang Nok and the Khao Thamorrat cave.
UNESCO's inscription places the Dvaravati culture here in the sixth to tenth centuries, and excavation at the site has reached settlement more than two thousand years old. No inscription from Si Thep gives a founding date, so the page prints the dated fabric rather than a year.
The Fine Arts Department publishes the hours and no fee. Two foreign-visitor figures circulate, 100 baht and 120 baht, and nothing official read for this page settles which applies now. Ask at the gate.
Because the state did. The first national list of ancient monuments, in 1935, registered the place as เมืองศรีเทพหรือไพศาลี — Mueang Si Thep, or Phaisali — recording both names in one line. The second has fallen out of use.
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 Phetchabun’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.