Ayutthaya, Thailand
- Julie-Anne Justus
- 2 hours ago
- 4 min read
We've headed about 80 km north of Bangkok for the day, to the historic city of Ayutthaya, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. (I do love visiting UWHSs.)
Ayutthaya flourished for about 400 years, between the 1300s and 1700s, as the capital city of the Siamese Kingdom. It was built on an island of rivers, far away enough from the sea to prevent warships from other countries reaching it easily.
At that time Ayutthaya was one of the world’s biggest cities, with sophisticated technology including a unique water management system. The city was a hub of global trade and diplomacy. (We have been encountering a few of these ancient trade centres in our recent travel: Dubrovnik, Venice. I guess that predisposes them towards being UNESCO sites.)
Just as Venice's location was ideal for trade between Asia and Europe, so Ayutthaya's location was perfect for trade with China and India, while being protected from Arab and European explorers / exploiters. At this time, the kingdom of Angkor (now Cambodia) had declined and was defeated by Ayutthaya in the 1400s. So the Royal Court of Ayutthaya was the bee's knees: ambassadors came to visit from the French Court at Versailles and the Mughal Court in Delhi, as well as from Japan and China. Foreign traders and missionaries set up shop downstream from the palace and built in their own style.
Bang Pa-In Palace was a summer retreat for Thai royals in the 1600s and has been maintained over the centuries (despite — spoiler alert — all the wars and disasters that Ayutthaya has experienced). It's still used for regional government business, has an important temple in the lake, and is beautifully laid out with a large park around ponds and waterways.
The garden has a herd of elephants! Okay, they're topiary ellies.
The Heavenly Light Throne Hall was presented as a gift to the king by a group of local Chinese merchants in the late 1800s. That's our tour guide, Tank, standing in front of the ornate blue and red gate.
The young soldiers on guard duty rotate every two hours. Conscription is part of the Thai system, and conscripts are selected by ballot. Ken referenced his own military training (it's only been 50+ years!) and was very critical about these youngsters' marching style.
But what comes around, goes around. Live by the sword, die by the sword. Etc. Like most great cities, Ayutthaya reached its zenith ... and was then destroyed by a foreign army. Siam (Thailand) and Burma (Myanmar) had been fighting on and off for centuries. In 1767 the Burmese army gained the upper hand and burned Ayutthaya to the ground.
So you have to imagine this area as, once, a great centre of temples and monasteries and trade and busy-ness. When it was destroyed by Burma, it burned for two weeks. Everything that was made of wood disappeared forever, but the temples and pagodas made of stone survived, albeit charred and blackened. (Tank told us that the sack of Ayutthaya is still resented by Thais.)
Today Ayutthaya is a large archaeological site. We wandered through the ruins of Ayutthaya's old city and visited a number of Buddhist temple complexes that included multiple pagodas. We can all recognise a pagoda when we see one — a tiered tower with multiple roofs, often found in Buddhist temple complexes — but did you know that their purpose is to house sacred relics and ashes of important people? 'Important people' build themselves a pagoda so that when they die, they can rest comfortably in there for ever. A spiritual mausoleum of the Buddhist kind.
Wat Phra Mahathat is one of the oldest temples, where important royal ceremonies of the Ayutthaya era were held.
Anyone looking for ideas to support a leaning wall?
We headed up into the temple. Hot, humid, steep, stuffy, spectacular views.
You've probably seen this image (below) before. It's the most photographed item in this site. A Buddha statue was buried underground, either intentionally to protect it or accidentally after war. As the baby tree grew, its roots wrapped around the Buddha head and carried it above ground. The rest of the statue is somewhere undergound, headless.
Another temple, Wat Chaiwatthanaram, was built in the 1600s by the then-king to honour his mother. It was erected as a replica of the Angkor Temple in Cambodia.
Many of the Buddha statues have lost their heads! According to Tank, the victorious armies would sweep in to temples and decapitate the statues in order to dispirit the local populace and convince them they had lost their spiritual protection. But it also appears that the heads were sold on to collectors, so it was a lucrative sideline for soldiers.
Wat Phra Si Sanphet was a residential palace, the royal family's private chapel and the place where the royal family's ashes were preserved. During Ayutthaya's heyday, this was the largest temple in the city. Later it became a monastery.
There's a lot to see and a lot to learn at Ayutthaya, and I'm sure I might have confused some of the photos, but it is a very interesting, impressive and slightly melancholy place. Fortunately there are records that survived the Burmese destruction, kept by the royal court, locals and visitors, and so historians do know quite a lot about this old city. We know that its art was influenced by traditional Thai style, as well as by Cambodia, Japan, China, India, Persia and Europe. A very cosmopolitan city!
And we also know that it was so admired that when the city was sacked, and the people moved south and built a new city in what is now Bangkok, they made every effort to replicate the urban design of Ayutthaya. Hard to believe, when we travel around crazy, sprawling Bangkok, but I'm sure that the ghosts linger if you know where to look for them.
Next: Chiang Mai
This really looks better on a bigger screen, www.julie-anne.online
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