Wat Chaiwatthanaram

About

Set on the western bank of the Chao Phraya River just outside the old island city of Ayutthaya, Wat Chaiwatthanaram rises in weathered laterite and brick — a complex of soaring prangs that retain the silhouette of a Khmer-inspired cosmological diagram.

The wat was founded in 1630 by King Prasat Thong as the inaugural religious work of his reign. Its name carries the sense of 'temple of long reign and glorious era', and tradition holds that the king built it both to gain Buddhist merit and to honour the memory of his mother, whose residence once stood nearby.

The complex centres on a 35-metre prang surrounded by four smaller spires, raised upon a rectangular platform with concealed entrances reached by steep interior stairs. Eight chedi-shaped chapels — known in Thai as Meru Thit and Meru Rai — encircle the central group, joined by a cross-shaped cloister (Phra Rabieng) that once housed roughly 120 seated Buddha images lacquered in black and gold.

The layout itself is a meditation on the Buddhist cosmos described in the fourteenth-century Traiphum Phra Ruang: the principal Prang Prathan represents Mount Meru at the axis of the world, the four smaller prangs are the four continents floating in the cosmic ocean, and the surrounding gallery marks the iron mountains at the edge of existence.

History

Wat Chaiwatthanaram was raised in 1630 as a royal foundation of King Prasat Thong, serving as a setting for state Buddhist rites and as a cremation ground for Ayutthaya's princes. Prince Damrong later suggested that the king had also built it to commemorate his victory over Longvek.

After the fall of Ayutthaya in 1767, the complex was abandoned for more than two centuries; brick was carted away for other uses and the Buddha images were beheaded by treasure hunters. The Thai Department of Fine Arts began conservation in 1987 and reopened the precinct in 1992. The 2011 Thai floods submerged the wat under two metres of water, and a substantial 200-million-baht restoration followed.