The second-class royal monastery on the Nong Han lakeshore whose whitewashed That stands over a laterite Khmer core, with an 11th or 12th-century Khmer inscription on the door frame of the passage into it and the province's principal Buddha image in the vihara beside.
วัดพระธาตุเชิงชุมวรวิหาร · Wat Phra That Choeng Chum Worawihan
| Official name | วัดพระธาตุเชิงชุมวรวิหาร — Wat Phra That Choeng Chum Worawihan |
|---|---|
| Where | That Choeng Chum, Mueang Sakon Nakhon, Sakon Nakhon |
| Royal temple class | Second class royal temple, Worawihan (พระอารามหลวงชั้นโท ชนิดวรวิหาร) Sakon Nakhon Provincial Office of Buddhism, whose own register entry states the grade verbatim as พระอารามหลวงชั้นโท ชนิด วรวิหาร and dates the elevation to 20 June B.E. 2506. Read in Thai from the office's own page. |
| Monastic order | Maha Nikaya — สังกัดคณะสงฆ์มหานิกาย, stated by the Sakon Nakhon Provincial Office of Buddhism |
| Ancient monument | Registered national ancient monument Royal Gazette vol. 116, special part 7 ง, 22 January B.E. 2542 — registration of the ancient monument and determination of its land boundary. Earlier instruments: vol. 99 (special issue) part 155, 21 October B.E. 2525, determining the land boundary; and the list of national ancient monuments at vol. 52, p. 3699, 8 March B.E. 2478. All three instruments were read from the Fine Arts Department's own register service on 26 September 2026, which returns the volume, part, date and the filename of the departmental scan for each. The register carries the monastery as monument 0003375 at status 5 — the department's code for a monument both registered and given a determined land boundary. The Provincial Office of Buddhism, describing the same registration from the ecclesiastical side, says the element declared a national ancient monument is the OLD ordination hall rather than the modern compound; the gazette wording itself was not opened, so the scope of the declaration is the office's account and not the instrument's own words. |
| Coordinates | 17.164427, 104.153004 Fine Arts Department national monument register, the department's own registered point for monument 0003375, read from its province service on 26 September 2026. It falls in Tambon That Choeng Chum, Mueang Sakon Nakhon, which is the subdistrict the register itself states. |
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 B.E. 2300 date is what a state register states rather than what an instrument proves, and the Provincial Office of Buddhism gives it without naming a source. The inscription is the one dated thing: it establishes that something Khmer stood here in the 17th Buddhist century, and says nothing about a Buddhist monastery. The office also records that the original That was laterite and that the present stupa was built over it, which means the visible monument is later than the thing it encloses.
Wat Phra That Choeng Chum stands on Charoen Mueang Road in the middle of Sakon Nakhon, a few hundred metres from the shore of Nong Han. It is the monastery the province defines itself by: the That appears in the centre of the provincial seal, and the provincial motto begins by naming it. The Sakon Nakhon Provincial Office of Buddhism's register entry gives the institutional facts plainly — a second-class royal monastery of the Worawihan type, Maha Nikaya, constituted in B.E. 2300, its ordination boundary granted on 10 November B.E. 2515, about eighteen rai of ground bounded by Charoen Mueang Road on the south and the public land of Nong Han on the east.
The monument itself is layered, and the office is explicit about it. The visible stupa is brick and stucco, square at the base and rising through a lotus-cornered upper form to a little over twenty-five metres, with no applied ornament; its shape follows Phra That Phanom in Nakhon Phanom rather than anything local. Beneath and inside that is something else: the base is built as an arched gateway carrying a prasat-form top, with arches on all four sides, solid within, constructed of laterite and given false doorways in the Khmer manner. The office states directly that the original That was laterite and that the present one was built over it. What a visitor reads as one building is at least two.
The dated evidence for the Khmer layer is the inscription. On the door frame of the passage into the That is a sandstone pillar, forty-nine centimetres wide and fifty-two high, carrying twelve lines of ancient Khmer script in the Khmer language. George Cœdès read and published it in Inscriptions du Cambodge volume VI in 1954 and registered it as K. 369, the Piédroit de Săk'on Lăk'on; the National Library catalogues it as สน. 2 and dates it to the 17th Buddhist century, and it was published again in จารึกในประเทศไทย volume 3 by the Fine Arts Department in B.E. 2529. Its content is administrative rather than devotional — the apportioning of land among the heads of individual villages. The Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre's field survey confirmed on 19 December B.E. 2563 that the stone is still in place at the monastery.
The monastery's modern history is closely tied to the Ninth Reign. The office records that King Bhumibol visited during the north-eastern tour of 2 to 20 November B.E. 2498; that on 11 November B.E. 2513 he and the Queen performed the ceremony of raising the tiered umbrella over the That; and that in B.E. 2532 he gave one hundred thousand baht from his private funds towards its restoration. The umbrella has needed attention more than once — the office notes that the finial has been struck by lightning several times, there being no lightning conductor in earlier years, which is part of why the stupa has been repaired repeatedly. Princess Chulabhorn cut the boundary-stone cord at the ordination hall on 20 October B.E. 2556, and Princess Soamsavali presided over the raising of a new finial on 5 February B.E. 2558.
The That itself: brick and stucco over a laterite core, square-based, rising through a lotus-cornered form to a little over twenty-five metres, deliberately following Phra That Phanom and carrying no applied ornament.
The arched gateways on all four sides of the base, with their prasat-shaped tops and their false Khmer-manner doorways — the laterite Khmer fabric the later stupa was built around.
The inscribed sandstone pillar on the door frame of the passage into the That: twelve lines of ancient Khmer script, catalogued by the National Library as สน. 2 and by Cœdès as K. 369, still in place.
Luang Pho Phra Ong Saen in the vihara — stucco, lacquered and gilded, in the subduing-Mara attitude and Chiang Saen manner, two metres across the lap and 3.20 metres from base to topknot on a 1.35-metre pedestal. The Provincial Office of Buddhism records that it was formerly called Phra Suwan Saen.
The old ordination hall, a sim of the open-hall type with a timber frame, brick and stucco walls and a shingle roof, facing south, which the Provincial Office of Buddhism dates to B.E. 2370 in the time of Phra Thani as ruler of the town.
The painting inside that old hall: a band of climbing vine around the walls, and on the gable devas and devi, the guardian stars, dragons and more vine, with several older images in wood and stucco standing below.
The sacred well in the compound, and the raised library pavilion over water which the Ministry of Culture's own cultural record for this monastery treats as a monument in its own right.
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 the principal place of worship in the province. Cover shoulders and knees; remove shoes before entering the vihara and the ordination hall. |
| Photography | No source we found states a rule, so we print none. |
| Getting there | Charoen Mueang Road, Tambon That Choeng Chum, Mueang Sakon Nakhon 47000, as the Tourism Authority of Thailand gives the address — in the centre of the city, a short walk from the Nong Han lakeshore. |
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.
It is both, in layers. The Provincial Office of Buddhism records that the original That was laterite with false doorways in the Khmer manner, and that the present brick-and-stucco stupa — whose form follows Phra That Phanom — was built over it. The Khmer inscription on the door frame of the passage in is dated by the National Library to the 17th Buddhist century.
It concerns the apportioning of land among the heads of individual villages. It is twelve lines of ancient Khmer script on a sandstone pillar, read and published by George Cœdès as K. 369 and catalogued by the National Library as สน. 2.
A second-class royal monastery of the Worawihan type. The Sakon Nakhon Provincial Office of Buddhism states the grade verbatim and dates the elevation to 20 June B.E. 2506.
The Tourism Authority of Thailand gives the worship festival for the That and for Luang Pho Phra Ong Saen as the waxing ninth to fifteenth days of the second lunar month. The Prasat Phueng procession at the end of the rains retreat also ends here.
No official source read for this page publishes them. Rather than copy a time from a travel site the hours are left unconfirmed; a working monastery of this kind is normally open through daylight.
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 Sakon Nakhon’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.