A stone-paved causeway three hundred metres long climbing a hill in the forest-monastery zone west of the city, to a five-room vihara holding a standing Buddha 12.5 metres tall with its right hand raised.
วัดสะพานหิน · Wat Saphan Hin
| Official name | วัดสะพานหิน — Wat Saphan Hin |
|---|---|
| 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 Number forty-nine on the Fine Arts Department's list of registered monuments in the park, with the same 8 March B.E. 2478 gazette citation. The department's site record also carries an unusually early restoration: in B.E. 2458 Somdet Chaofa Kromluang Phitsanulok Prachanat had a local headman named Chong build a stair to buttress the wall behind the great image. Later excavation and restoration are dated to B.E. 2498 and 2508. The Gazette itself was not read. |
| World Heritage | Historic Town of Sukhothai and Associated Historic Towns (574) |
| Coordinates | 17.026400, 99.675000 Fine Arts Department site record: 17°1'35" N, 99°40'30" 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 gives a year for the building of the vihara or the making of the image. What is established is a description in an inscription of B.E. 1835 that matches this place, a restoration in B.E. 2458, and departmental work in 2498 and 2508.
The ground west of the Sukhothai walls is the aranyik, the forest-monastery zone, and the Fine Arts Department explains the term as an administrative fact rather than a poetic one: the community was divided into those who lived in the town and those who lived outside it and concentrated on meditation. The route out to them ran through the western gate, Pratu O, and it is the road the department associates with a series of named figures — the king going out to pay respects, Maha Thammaracha Lithai spending the rains at Wat Pa Mamuang after his ordination, and the Sinhalese patriarch invited to Sukhothai to teach.
Wat Saphan Hin is about 2.3 kilometres north-west of that gate, on a low hill the department gives as roughly two hundred metres. The temple is named for the way up: a path paved with stone running about three hundred metres from the foot of the hill to the terrace, which is what saphan hin means. There is a second route round the north side of the hill that the department believes was for elephants. The stone underfoot is uneven and the walk is the experience; the monument is what you find at the top of it.
On the terrace is a vihara platform of five rooms, twenty metres by twenty-six, brick with laterite pillars, facing east over the plain and the walled city. Inside it stands a stucco Buddha 12.5 metres tall with the right hand raised in the attitude of dispelling fear. The department identifies it as the kind of image inscription 1 calls Phra Attharot — the tall standing type — and quotes the inscription's description of a forest-monastery vihara, great and tall and beautiful, with one such image standing in it. Six small chedi bases are scattered over the terrace, and one of them, at the foot of the eastern stair, is a lotus-bud chedi four metres square.
The temple's modern history begins earlier than most of the park's. In B.E. 2458, two decades before the national registration and forty before the department's own excavations, Somdet Chaofa Kromluang Phitsanulok Prachanat had a headman named Chong build a stair to hold up the wall behind the great image. The department records this as the first restoration. Excavation and restoration proper followed in B.E. 2498 and again in 2508. The hill is also the reason to come late: the vihara faces east, so the image looks back down over the whole city, and the department's own service page opens the aranyik zone 08.00 to 16.30, which is shorter than the walled city and closes before the light is at its best.
The causeway itself: about three hundred metres of stone paving climbing the east face of the hill from the road to the temple terrace, which is what gives the temple its name.
The five-room vihara platform on the terrace, twenty metres by twenty-six, brick with laterite pillars, facing east over the plain.
The standing stucco Buddha inside it, 12.5 metres tall with the right hand raised in the attitude of dispelling fear — the type inscription 1 calls Phra Attharot.
The stair behind the image, built in B.E. 2458 at the direction of Somdet Chaofa Kromluang Phitsanulok Prachanat to buttress the wall, and therefore a piece of early twentieth-century engineering holding up a fourteenth-century wall.
Six small chedi bases across the terrace, one of them a lotus-bud chedi four metres square at the foot of the eastern stair.
The second path round the north side of the hill, which the Fine Arts Department believes was the way up for elephants.
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 | In the aranyik zone west of the walls, which the Fine Arts Department's service page opens 08.00 to 16.30 daily — noticeably shorter than the walled central zone. |
|---|---|
| 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 | About 2.3 kilometres north-west of Pratu O, the western city gate, then a climb of roughly three hundred metres of uneven stone paving. There is no vehicle access to the terrace. |
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.
Because of the way up. Saphan hin means a stone bridge or stone causeway, and the Fine Arts Department says the temple takes its name from the path paved with stone that runs from the foot of the hill to the temple terrace, a distance the department gives as about three hundred metres. The paving is still there and still what you walk on. There is also a second route curving round the north side of the hill which the department believes was made for elephants rather than people.
It is the tall standing Buddha type named in inscription 1, and the Fine Arts Department uses the term for the 12.5-metre image here as well as for the pair that flanked the principal chedi at Wat Mahathat. The Sukhothai park guide glosses the size as around eighteen sok, an old Thai measure of the forearm. At Wat Saphan Hin the image stands with its right hand raised in the attitude of dispelling fear, facing east down the hill towards the walled city.
Inscription 1 says the king rode a white elephant called Ruchakhri out to pay respects at the forest monastery on the days of the full and the dark moon, and the Fine Arts Department quotes that passage on this monument's record. What the inscription does not do is name Wat Saphan Hin. The department's language is hedged: this was likely the temple concerned, and the standing image referred to is understood to be this one. It is a well-founded identification rather than something the stone states.
The temple is on a low hill the Fine Arts Department puts at about two hundred metres, and the way up is roughly three hundred metres of original stone paving, uneven and steep in places, with no vehicle access to the terrace. There is no shade at the top. The reward is the only view in Sukhothai that puts the whole walled city below you, seen past a standing Buddha 12.5 metres tall. The department opens this zone 08.00 to 16.30, shorter than the central zone.
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.