The relic temple at the centre of the first Siamese capital, and the place where the lotus-bud chedi — the one form of stupa that belongs to Sukhothai and nowhere else — stands at full height above two hundred smaller ones.
วัดมหาธาตุ · Wat Mahathat
| Official name | วัดมหาธาตุ — Wat Mahathat |
|---|---|
| Where | Mueang Kao, Mueang Sukhothai, Sukhothai |
| 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. 52, part 75, 8 March B.E. 2478 The Fine Arts Department's site record for this monument names the gazette announcement of 8 March B.E. 2478 under การดำเนินการ, and the department's own list of registered monuments inside the park puts Wat Mahathat first of the fifty-eight. That list also states how much of the park is registered and how much is not: one hundred and ninety-three monuments have been surveyed since B.E. 2478 and fifty-eight of them are registered. The Gazette itself was not opened — ratchakitcha.soc.go.th refused every request during this research, as it has in every previous run of this guide — so the citation is the department's, quoted, not a scan anybody read. |
| World Heritage | Historic Town of Sukhothai and Associated Historic Towns (574) |
| Coordinates | 17.016700, 99.705600 Fine Arts Department site record: 17°1'0" N, 99°42'20" E |
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 source consulted in this run gives a year for the foundation of Wat Mahathat, and the Fine Arts Department does not offer one. What the record fixes is later: an image celebrated in B.E. 1904, a rebuilding described in an inscription of the following century, ashes identified in a subsidiary chedi, and a registration in 2478. The reign in which the temple began is not established, and this page does not supply one.
Wat Mahathat sits in the middle of the walled city, on a square of ground two hundred metres on a side enclosed by its own brick wall, and the Fine Arts Department describes that placing as deliberate: the temple of the great relic at the centre, on the old Indian model of the cosmos, with the rest of the city arranged around it. It is the largest monument in Sukhothai and the department calls it the largest group of monuments in the city. Roughly two hundred subsidiary chedis stand inside the wall, along with ten vihara platforms, eight image niches, an ordination hall fourteen metres by twenty-five, and four ponds.
The principal chedi is the reason people come. Its upper member is a tapered bud on a slender shaft, the shape Thai calls a lotus bud or a rice-offering spire, and the department is explicit that it is the signature of Sukhothai art and appears essentially nowhere else. It is equally explicit that this was probably not the original: the department's park guide suggests the first chedi here looked like the four directional monuments that still stand on the same base. The base measures twenty-seven metres each way and the chedi rises twenty-nine metres above it, on three stepped tiers, with a band of stucco disciples walking with their palms together right around the lowest of them.
Two Fine Arts Department pages describe what surrounds it and they do not agree. The site record says four prangs stand on the four faces of the shared base and four chedis in a prasat form the department calls Srivijaya mixed with Sinhalese stand at the corners. The park guide reverses the arrangement: the corner monuments show Hariphunchai and Lan Na influence, and the ones at the middle of each side are Sukhothai prasat-form chedis with stucco in a Sinhalese manner. Both readings are printed here because both are the department's, and choosing between them would be a decision this page has no basis for.
The largest image is gone. The vihara east of the chedi held a bronze Buddha whose lap the department measures at 6.25 metres, cast at the order of Maha Thammaracha Lithai; the site record dates the celebration to B.E. 1904 and quotes the inscription that describes it, while the park guide gives B.E. 1905 for the casting. Early in the Bangkok period it was floated downriver by raft on the order of Rama I and installed in the great vihara of Wat Suthat, where Rama II gave it the name Phra Si Sakyamuni. What is left in Sukhothai is the platform it stood on. South of the principal chedi is a five-spired chedi, the second largest in the temple, and a gold-leaf inscription found there gives the department reason to believe it holds the ashes of Lithai himself.
The lotus-bud chedi itself: twenty-seven metres square at the base, twenty-nine metres high, on three stepped tiers, with a continuous band of stucco disciples in the attitude of respect walking clockwise around the lowest tier.
The eight monuments sharing the chedi's base — four on the faces, four at the corners — whose attribution the Fine Arts Department gives two different ways on two different pages.
The empty pedestal in the vihara east of the chedi, where the bronze image with a 6.25-metre lap stood until it was rafted to Bangkok and renamed Phra Si Sakyamuni at Wat Suthat.
The Vihara Sung immediately east of it, raised on a brick lotus base about 1.5 metres high in an Ayutthaya-period manner and therefore later than what surrounds it — so much later that it leaves an awkwardly narrow strip between its front and the enclosure wall.
The five-spired chedi in the southern group, where a gold-leaf inscription gives the department grounds to identify it as the resting place of Maha Thammaracha Lithai's ashes.
Two standing images of the kind inscription 1 calls Phra Attharot, about eighteen sok tall according to the department's park guide, in the mondops that flank the principal chedi.
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 | The Fine Arts Department's own service page for the park gives 06.30 to 19.30 Monday to Friday and Sunday, and 06.30 to 21.00 on Saturday, when the monuments are lit. Wat Mahathat is inside the walled central zone, which keeps those hours. |
|---|---|
| Admission | Thai nationals: 20 baht. Foreign visitors: 100 baht. |
| Dress | Not established from an official source. |
| Photography | No source we found states a rule, so we print none. |
| Getting there | In the middle of the walled city, directly opposite the Ramkhamhaeng National Museum and about twelve kilometres west of modern Sukhothai town. The park office answers on 055 697527 and is open 08.30 to 16.30. |
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.
The Fine Arts Department places it in the early Sukhothai period and gives no year, and no source consulted in this research supplies one. What is dated is later than the founding: inscription 1 of B.E. 1835 describes a vihara and images at the centre of the city, an inscription of B.E. 1904 records the celebration of the great bronze image, and the Wat Si Chum inscription describes a rebuilding of the relic monument afterwards. Anything you read that gives a single founding year for this temple is going beyond what the department itself will say.
No. Mahathat means the temple of the great relic, so nearly every old Thai capital has one, and the examples in Ayutthaya, Sukhothai, Si Satchanalai, Phitsanulok, Nakhon Si Thammarat and Bangkok are entirely separate monuments with separate histories. The Ayutthaya one is the temple with the sandstone Buddha head in the tree roots. This one is the temple with the lotus-bud chedi. The Fine Arts Department's own website has been found serving one province's Wat Mahathat under another province's address, so attaching the province to the name is not pedantry.
It is a stupa whose top is a tapered bud on a slender shaft rather than a bell or a tower, and the Fine Arts Department describes it as the architectural form that expresses Sukhothai art and belongs to no other tradition. The one at Wat Mahathat is the largest: twenty-seven metres square at the base and twenty-nine metres tall on three stepped tiers. The department also says it is probably not the temple's first chedi, and that the original likely resembled the four directional monuments still standing on the same platform.
To Bangkok. The vihara east of the principal chedi held a bronze image with a lap 6.25 metres wide, cast at the order of Maha Thammaracha Lithai and celebrated according to the inscription in B.E. 1904. Early in the Bangkok period Rama I had it floated down by raft and installed in the great vihara of Wat Suthat, where Rama II gave it the name Phra Si Sakyamuni. The large platform it stood on is still in place at Sukhothai and is one of the more affecting things in the temple.
The Fine Arts Department's own service page for Sukhothai Historical Park gives 06.30 to 19.30 from Monday to Friday and on Sunday, and 06.30 to 21.00 on Saturday when the monuments are illuminated. The aranyik zone west of the walls keeps shorter hours of 08.00 to 16.30, and Wat Si Chum and Wat Phra Phai Luang open 07.30 to 17.30. Admission is charged per zone at 20 baht for Thai nationals and 100 baht for foreign visitors, with small extra charges for bringing in a bicycle or a car.
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 Sukhothai’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.