Historic City of Ayutthaya 🇹🇭 Thailand Best Place

The modern town of Ayutthaya is set among the ruins of the ancient city. The city is closely related to water and is located where three rivers meet. These rivers surrounding Ayutthaya make it an island. This city was situated near the ocean and served as a port for sea transportation, which facilitated communications with other cities. In the 14th century AD, it prospered into a large seaport and emerging center of political power. Ayutthaya was an important port of commerce where forest goods were major export products. They were sold to traders from India, Japan, the Arab world and important countries of Europe. The Ayutthaya court acted as middlemen in dealing with these traders. Commoners weren't allowed to trade directly with them. This brought about enormous wealth for the court and the aristocrats, thus enabling them to import luxury goods. Ayutthaya was the capital city of the Thai kingdom of Ayutthaya and one of the world's largest and most sophisticated cities until it was sacked by the Burmese in 1756. The surviving Ayutthaya works of art show they were mostly for religious purpose to adorn the more than 500 temples located in the city. In the Wat Ratchaburana, built in 1424 and splendidly restored, the towers have even retained some of their original stucco. Ancient documents state that this temple was built by King Boram Ratchathir at the second, at the place where his two older brothers were fighting over the right to the throne. Judging from its style, most academics agree that the temple was built in the 15th century. Initially, Ayutthayan art was a mixture of local traditions with strong influences from Sukhothai. It was only during the second period that a true national art was born, the product of diverse cultural influences. As the state opened up politically toward Europe in the 17th century, traces of Western culture began to appear. All temples were important religiously, but the most significant temple of the city, which received the king's patronage, was known as the Wat Mahathat temple, which was considered the religious centre and the centre of the universe. According to tradition, Wat Mahathat was built in 1384 by King Ratchathirat to house a relic of the Buddha, but it's more likely it was built during the reign of King Boromaratha. Distinctive sculptures of the Ayutthaya period were Buddha statues made of stone, lime, mortar or bronze, then coated with gold leaves or gold paint to symbolise the pureness of the Lord Buddha, whose body always illuminated with glory. Wat Mahathat is typical of the Ayutthaya ruins. Large crumbling stupas surrounded by low laterite walls and rows of headless Buddhas. One Buddha head is in a tree trunk. Though the body is gone, the sandstone head is entrapped in the roots and lies beneath a Bodai tree in the vicinity of Wat Mahathat. This piece of antiquity is extremely precious, even though it's trapped under a tree. The chedi of the Wat Phuketong temple was built in 1387 as a memorial to celebrate the victory of King Naraswan the Great over the Burmese. The body of the chedi was of Ayutthaya style, while the base of the chedi was of Burmese style, in order to symbolise the victory of the Thais over the Burmese. This large chedi is located in the middle of a field, resembling a real mountain, which corresponds to the name of the chedi, Golden Mount. Wat Lokaya Sutoram is located directly west of the Royal Palace. The highlight of this temple is its enormous reclining Buddha image, which is located behind the ubosat. It was once encased by a vihan, but that's also collapsed to the basic foundation level. The arm supporting the head is vertical, instead of being folded as in the early Ayutthaya and Yutong periods. This vertical arm is a characteristic of reclining images made in the middle Ayutthaya period, after the 16th century. The reclining Buddha image is usually wrapped in brightly coloured orange cloth. Many people have covered portions of the image in gold leaf. A small altar exists beside it, where visitors can make offerings. The reclining Buddha is 42 metres long and 8 metres high. The Vihan Phra Mongkol Bopit is home to one of Thailand's largest bronze Buddha images, even though a restoration of the original, which was badly damaged by a lightning strike, this Buddha image is still impressive. The Buddha statue was either brought from Sukhothai or copied from a Sukhothai image. It was erected here in 1615 by King Ekato Sarut, in honour of his brother Narasone, who drove the Burmese from Sukhothai. The present temple was designed by the brother of King Rama V, who also designed the marble temple in Bangkok. Wat Phra Sri Sangphet is the biggest temple ruin in Ayutthaya historic city. It was the royal temple, situated within the boundary of the Grand Palace. The monastic structures were basically straight aligned on an east-west axis. The main entity was formed by the prasat, the three cheddis with their mandapas, and the royal vihara or chapel, presiding over all structures. The three cheddis, being the core of the temple, rested on a high platform with the later built mandapas, square structures with a spire, situated at the eastern side of each cheddai. The three bell-shaped cheddis are identical and were constructed on a rectangular platform. The cheddis are built in the Sukhothai style, derived from the Srivijayan stupa, characterised by superimposed pedestals. The porches have a niche in which a standing Buddha image was placed on three sides. The porch on the east side gave access to the garbhagra, a small sacred chamber in the interior of the cheddai, in which consecrated objects, in this case the king's ashes, were contained. To compete with the old capital, the kings of Ayutthaya richly endowed the monasteries, which acquired gigantic proportions like Wat Mahathat from the 14th to the 17th centuries, and Wat Sri Sangphet in the 15th century. Some distance from the other main temple sites of Ayutthaya, just across the river to the southwest of the city, is Wat Chai Wat Thanaram. This temple is an excellent example of Khmer architecture in the Ayutthaya period and is still in good shape. The temple layout was clearly planned to symbolise Buddhist cosmology. In fact, the plan of this temple shows that the main prang symbolises Mount Meru, while the corner prangs symbolise the four continents. They're all surrounded by the cosmic mountains signified by the connecting galleries. The monastery is almost perfectly sculpted, rendering it a beauty as much in the horizontal as in the vertical plan. The use of eight spired roof halls or meru in the construction of the gallery makes Wat Chai Wat Thanaram a unique monument. A long gallery was built around the towers in the shape of a large square, standing so completely full of large costly Buddha images that visitors almost overlooked the extraordinary multitude of smaller, medium-sized and very small images. 120 seated Buddha statues resemble a wall demarcating a sacred area. The minor prangs each measure about 11 metres in width and 5 square metres at the base. Today, the site's characteristic architecture of brick and stucco is devoid of its decoration. But this site bears excellent witness to the period of development of a true national Thai art. Wat Yai Chai Mongkol is located near the main Ayutthaya ruins and a short distance from the walls of Ayutthaya. This monastery was built by King U Thong in 1357 AD for the use of the monks who'd returned from Ceylon after studying under Fra Vanarat Maha Thera. It's famed for an impressively large statue of the reclining Buddha inside the temple compound. Buddhism does not believe that the spirit can return to the body after death. So when a person is deceased, the body will be cremated. The ashes may be stored for people to pay homage to. The Buddha's relics are usually stored in a layered casket enshrined in a vault of a prang or a chedi. Built by the Ayutthaya's first ruler in 1357, the temple is also known as Chao Phya Thai Temple and has a large chedi that dominates the skyline. It was built with 28,000 tons of brick and is 62 meters high. A rectangular gallery encircles the principal chedi. Along the inner wall of the gallery are rows of Buddha images on decorated bases. These rows of Buddha statues are newly sculpted in order to replace those which collapsed over time. The statues are all identical. Founded around 1350, Ayutthaya became the second Siamese capital after Sukhothai. Its remains give an idea of its past splendor. Ayutthaya was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1991.